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P3 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


.  •-  ••  • 


*      •••    .'.      ••.     •.       •      •  • 


BY 


Helen  Watterson  Moody 


:  •••  .. ; 

I, .  •  •  • •• 
'  •  •  •  • 


J  3  J  » 

.        .    .      J    J  •  ». 


New  York 

Charles  Scribner's  Sons 

1898 


.   <      •  « 


Copyright,  1898,  bj> 
Charles  Scribner's  Sons 


c    «  « 


«  «  t 


«  •  « 


1  ♦,  *  *  • 


•..*.....••• 


«  «  •     »    " 

C   i    *       *    i.    *■ 


TROW  DIRECTORV 

PRINTING  *N0  BOOKBINDING  COMPANY 

NEW   YORK 


HT'. 


KATE  AND  A.  B. 


434436    ' 


PREFACE 

'T^HIS  little  hook,  for  men,  women,  and 
the  Unquiet  Sex,  is  written  with  no 
thought  of  preferring  charges  against  any 
class  of  persons  or  estate  of  being,  still  less 
is  it  intended  to  set  forth  any  comprehensive 
treatment  of  the  duties  and  privileges  of 
women  in  the  hurried  and  perplexing  pres- 
ent. I  have  desired  simply  to  offer  a  pre- 
sentation of  a  single  phase — a  passing  one, 
let  us  hope — in  the  affairs  of  women;  a 
phase  to  which  many  of  us  have  been  too 
busy,  perhaps,  to  give  its  full  share  of 
consideration. 

Tins  singleness  of  purpose  has,  not  un- 
naturally,  involved  a   limitation   in   the 

vii 


Preface 

point  of  view  ;  and  since  this  was  intended, 
I  trust  it  will  not  be  reckoned  against  my 
fairness  of  judgment.  Doubtless  there  is 
much  to  be  said  in  rejoinder,  and  each 
reader  will  be  able  to  comment  for  himself 
or  herself  in  passing. 

My  thanks  are  due  the  editor  of  the 
Forum  for  his  courtesy  in  permitting  me 
to  include  "  The  Evolution  of  '  Woman,' " 
published  under  another  title  in  the  Forum 
of  September,  189^. 

H.  IV.  M. 


Vlll 


CONTENTS 

Page 

The  Woman  Collegian / 

Women's  Clubs 5i 

Women  and  Reforms 65 

The  Evolution  of  "Woman"    .    .    .  89 

The  Case  of  Maria ng 


THE  WOMAN  COLLEGIAN 


3    y      i 


THE  WOMAN   COLLEGIAN 

THE  woman  collegian,  both  as  a  gradu- 
ate and  an  undergraduate,  is  a  very  se- 
rious young  person.  So  is  her  brother,  but 
he  is  serious  about  different  things.  As 
an  undergraduate  he  takes  his  fraternities 
and  his  societies  and  his  clubs  and  his  Alma 
Mater's  record  in  athletics  with  great  grav- 
ity; he  takes  his  particular  college  very  hard 
indeed;  he  is  a  Yale  or  a  Cornell  or  a  AsTo,>rand 
Harvard  man,  and  that  is  about  all  there  is  takTu.^ 
of  him  for  the  first  year  after  graduation. 
Then  he  gets  over  it.  But  his  sister  thinks 
more  of  her  education  than  she  does  of  her 
college,  and  her  choice  of  electives  is  of 
more  importance  to  her  than  her  choice  of 
societies.  When  she  gets  out  of  school, 
even  after  several  years — after  her  brother 
has  digested  all  his  importance  as  a  collegian 

3 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


and  thinks  only  of  his  college  training  as  a 
good  thing  to  have  had  in  order  that  he 
might  know  how  secondary   was  its  value, 
after  ail  exr.ept  Lo  set  hin^  on  an  easy  level 
with  other  fellows,  and  give  him  an  occasional 
interest  in  athletics,  and  put  him  into  a  uni- 
versity club — the  woman  collegian  does  not 
succeed  in  sloughing  off  her  scholastic  hab- 
its of  thought.     She  goes  in  for  serious  re- 
forms  and   post-graduate   knowledge.     She 
has  convictions  beyond  her  unschooled  sis- 
ter, and  is,  even  yet,  caught  writing  papers 
on  the  careers  of  college  women,  and  hsten- 
ing  while  others  discourse  upon  what  college 
neu,on^an  womcu  owe  the  world.     All  this  makes  her 
7"'^nTyci  a  trifle /^^^^,  over-assertive,  too  conscious  of 
/roZTet      herself  and  her  type.     Thus  she  has  attracted 
education,.      ^^  herself  a  certain  interest,  which  she  must 
not  mistake  for  entire  admiration,  as  one 
may  get  the  attention  of  a  drawing-room  by 
an   awkward    and    self-conscious   entrance. 
Her  learning  is  distinctly  an  acquirement 
and    not   a  part  of  herself,  and  not  infre- 
quently fits  her  badly,  like  a  suit  of  ready- 
made  clothes.     It   is  still  customary,  even 


The  Woman  Collegian 


in  polite  circles,  to  make  distinct  mention 
of  collegiate  advantages  whenever  a  young 
woman  is  present  who  has  been  fortunate 
enough  to  enjoy  them,  in  order  that  the  un- 
wary stranger  may  have  his  cue.  While 
everything  in  Tom's  life  after  Harvard  is 
calculated  to  take  the  nonsense  out  of  him 
and  put  the  man  collegian  on  a  level  with 
the  rest  of  us,  everything  in  Harriet's  life,  in 
college  and  out  of  it,  marks  her  as  one  set 
apart.  And  all  this  after  thirty  years  of  col- 
lege training  for  women,  and  with  thousands 
of  women  graduates,  whose  lives  and  achieve- 
ments bear  witness  to  the  fact  that  a  woman 
may  undertake  the  utmost  severities  of  what 
is  still  politely  known  as  the  "  higher  "  edu- 
cation, without  giving  the  least  indication 
then  or  thereafter  of  remarkable  ability  of 
any  kind. 

"And  a  very  good  thing  it  is,  too,"  as 
Mr.  Punch  says  in  answer  to  the  sentiment, 
"There's  no  place  like  home."  It  would 
be  sad,  indeed,  if  a  young  woman  who  asks 
no  more  than  the  indifferent  equipment  for 
life  that  a  college  training  gives  should  be 

5 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


made  to  pay  the  penalty  of  extraordinariness 
therefor,  when  to  be  ordinary  is  so  much 
more  wholesome  for  the  individual  and  so 
much  more  desirable  for  the  world  in  general. 

There   are   several    reasons  why  this  un- 
fortunate solemnity   has   attached  itself   to 
Harriet's  education,  some  of  which  will  be 
easily  dissipated,  no  doubt,  as  the  results  of 
education  inhere  in  the  physical  and  men- 
tal  constitution    of    women.     When  one's 
Some  rea-      graudmothcr  is  known  to  have  been  a  bache- 
//:;^:^'  is  lor  of  the  nberal  arts,  a  master's  degree  for 
rr'"'       the  fourth  descendant  is  a  matter  of  simple 
assumption.     But  some  of  these  reasons  will 
not  disappear  until  certain  defects  in  the  col- 
lege training    for   women   shall   have  been 
remedied.     I  suppose  we  all  agree  that  the 
ideal   education    for   women   cannot    result 
from  segregating  them,  since  the  segregation 
of  either  sex  is  sure  to  result  in  intensifying 
its  peculiarities.     Women,  as  a  sex,  are  dis- 
posed to  take  things  too  seriously,  and  to 
dissipate  vital  force  in  that  nervous  debauch 
known   as  worrying.     Ten  women   shut  in 

6 


The  Woman  Collegian 


together  will  worry  one  hundred  times  as 
much  as  ten  men  shut  in  together,  and  espe- 
cially is  this  true  when  the  women  are  in 
that  unstable  equilibrium  of  the  emotions 
which  goes  with  youth.  So,  also,  a  hun- 
dred women  shut  in  together  will  exhaust 
themselves,  presently,  merely  by  being  to- 
gether, the  sensitive  temperaments  eating 
into  each  other  like  corrosive  acids.  The 
housing  of  hundreds  of  girls  in  large  dormi- 
tories, with  a  common  sitting-room  for  three 
or  four  girls,  is  wholly  inadequate  to  the 
needs  of  human  nature,  and  some  day  some 
wise  woman  with  money  to  spend  for  the 
better  education  of  women  (which  is  not 
necessarily  the  higher  education)  will  build 
the  ideal  home  for  women  students,  in  which 
there  shall  be  no  more  than  a  dozen  girls, 
each  of  whom  shall  have  a  suite  of  rooms 
altogether  her  own,  into  which  she  may  shut  Heaitk  of 
herself  as  she  wills  for  the  solitude  which  is  body  de- 

1     itiand  soli- 

so  necessary  alike  to  the  health  ot  the  soul  tude. 
and  the  body,  and  which,  more  than  any- 
thing   else,    relieves    the    nervous    tension 
brought  about  by  the  action  and  reaction  of 

7 


V^e  Unquiet  Sex 


one  personality  upon  another.     Meantime  I 
wish  it  were  possible  for  some  college  presi- 
dent to  try  the  experiment  of  requiring  each 
woman  student  to  spend  one  or  two  hours  of 
each  day  absolutely  alone  and  relaxed,  that 
the   whirling   mind    and    quivering   nerves 
might  hush  themselves  in  the  blessedness  of 
silence  and  seclusion.     Such  quiet  insistence 
upon   the   individual   life   would  do   much 
toward  a  correction  of  the  common  and  not 
unnatural  tendency  among  these  segregated 
and  unstable  young  women  to  lavish  them- 
selves in  extravagant  friendships  with  each 
other,    and   very   often,    also,   in    excessive 
and  emotional  admiration  for  some  teacher, 
whose  personal  magnetism  is  thus  made  to 
bring  tribute   to  her   egotism    and  vanity. 
The  wisest  and  most  helpful  teacher  is  not 
the  one  whom  the  girls  themselves  "rave 
over"    and  find  most    "magnetic."     It  is 
she  who  carefully  avoids  the  appeal  to  the 
emotions,   and    who,   without  repelling  the 
affections,  kno\A's  how    to   check   hysterical 
excess  and  keep  the  young  nature  cool  and 
steady  by  a  delicate  reserve  and  a  gentle  de- 

8 


The  Woman  Collegian 


v^^ 


cision  at  the  first  indication  of  need.     It  is   why  is  he- 
a  curious  fact  m  psychology — or  is  it  phys-  good  /or 
iology  ? — that  while  hero-worship  is  a  good  good/or  "" 
thing  for  a  boy,  it  is  seldom  a  good  thing  ^^ 
for  a  girl. 

It  is  declared,  by  those  who  have  had  the 
opportunity  of  judging,  that  one  of  the  ad- 
vantages of  co-education  is  a  distinct  lessen- 
ing of  the  emotional  and  nervous  strain 
among  the  women  students.  Just  why  the 
presence  of  men  as  teachers  and  fellow-pupils 
should  have  both  a  quieting  and  a  tonic  ef-  ^-  ''^''"  j|. 
feet  upon  women,  I  leave  it  for  others  wiser  , , 

than  myself  to  explain,  but  there  is  certainly 
less   nervous  tension,    morbidity,   and  self-  ^ 

consciousness  among  college  women  associ-  '^ 

ated  with  men  than  among  those  in  the 
women's  colleges,  even  though  there  is  also 
to  be  found  an  occasional  instance  of  that 
exclusive  love  between  a  man  and  a  woman, 
which  will  spring  up  sometimes  even  in  the 
arid  soil  of  the  higher  education.  To  many 
persons  this  last  is  a  most  undesirable  state 
of  affairs,  and  it  is  usually  considered  one  of 
the  strongest  arguments  against  co-education. 

9 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


It  is  a  fact  that  boys  and  girls  in  college  do 
sometimes  fall  in  love,  and  sometimes  they 
marry,  though  oftener  they  both  fall  well  out 
of  it  before  their  first  year  of  separation  is  past. 
Of  course  falHng  in  love  "  takes  their  minds 
off  their  books,"  in  the  phrase  of  the  anxious 
parent,  but  love  is  a  distraction  whenever  it 
occurs,  and  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  there 
can  be  granted  a  more  fortunate  opportunity 
for  indulging  in  so  engrossing  an  experience 
than  the  seclusion  and  serenity  of  college 
life.     I  should  call  those  two  young  persons 
exceptionally  blest  by  fortune  who  get  their 
is/auin.in  falling   in   love    satisfactorily   accomplished 
^^% ,;:?/"■  before  graduation,   in  the  -little,  bubbling 
^'"''""''      back-water  of  the  quadrangle."    There  is  no 
handicap  to  business,  later  on,  so  heavy  as 
love  and  the  pursuit  of  the  loved  one,  as  any 
man  who  has  borne  its  burden  in  the  heat  of 
the  day  can  testify. 

Nor  is  the  value  of  a  tender  experience  of 
this  kind  in  early  youth  to  be  despised  in 
casting  up  the  sum  of  the  educative  forces  in 
college  life.  Aside  from  the  general  human- 
izing  effect  it  is  sure  to  have  on  the  young 

lO 


The  Woman  Collegian 


male  animal,  such  an  affair  usually  results  in 
opening  up  to  him  a  whole  new  world  of  in- 
tellectual perceptions.     The  objective  world,    its  place  in 

the  general 

which  was  his  so  long,  suddenly  grows  dmi.    edu.ationo/ 

.  the    human 

He  learns,  probably  for  the  first  time,  the  male. 
value  of  introspection,  the  uses  of  poetry, 
the  joys  of  melancholy,  the  possibility — nay, 
the  potency — of  quite  another  .point  ofwie^ 
than  his  own.  After  one  has  been  years 
out  of  college  he  not  infrequently  looks  back, 
to  find  that  the  influences  most  potent  and 
helpful,  and  sweetest  to  remember,  were,  not 
the  triumphs  in  the  class-room,  the  strug- 
gles in  the  debating-society,  the  slow  acquire- 
ment of  random  and  unprofitable  fact,  but 
the  touch  of  arm  in  arm  on  the  college  cam- 
pus, the  "  simmerings  of  thought  and  heart  at 
the  hearth-stone  of  a  friend,"  and  perhaps 
also  the  sophomore  love  that  was  so  awaken- 
ing, so  delicate,  so  deep,  and  so  short-lived  ! 

Just  what  should  be  the  ideal  education 
for  women,  is,  and  must  be,  an  unsettled 
question  for  some  time  to  come.  For  it  is 
still  undetermined  how  distinctly  the  area  of 

II 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


woman's    needs   and    activities    should    be 
bounded  by  sex -limitations,  and  how  largely 
ive  have  not  it  may   be  identified   with    the   needs   and 
i%n"Ihf      activities  of  men.     This  conclusion,  when 
iilntr'  it  comes,  will  be  deduced,  not  from  tradition 
tvomen,        ^^  ambition,    nor  from  personal  prejudice, 
but  from  science,  through  the  things  biology 
and    physiology  and  sociology  have  yet  to 
find   out   about  this   serious  matter  of  sex. 
>  We  have  lately  been  told  by  a  man  with  a 
\^''i^"microscope  that  a^division  of  labor  upon  the 
Vf^'         lines  of  sex  is  distinctly  marked  as  far  down 
^  '  in  the  animal  world  as  the  sponges.     If  this 

be  true,!? would  seem  that  no  system  of  edu- 
cation for  human  beings  can  be  comprehen- 
sive and   satisfactory,   which  leaves  out  of 
account   this  first  dividing  principle.     For 
thirty  years  now  we  have  been  exploiting  a 
higher  education  for  women,  based  on  what 
has  been  called  the  rational  principle,  that 
there  is  no  sex  in  mind  ;  and  yet,  as  a  matter 
Because  ^e  of  fact,  the  idea  of  sex  has  not  for  an  hour 
Z'aung  '^'  been  lost  sight  of.     The  education  of  women 
'IhriitTof  has  still  proceeded  along  the  lines  of  sex— 
'''''  the  other  sex.     A  strenuous  insistence  in  the 


12 


The  Woman  Collegian 


women's  colleges  that  the  curricula  should 
be  as  nearly  as  possible  identical  with  those 
of  men,  the  constant  and  jealous  watch  kept 
on  the  comparative  standings  of  young  men 
and  women  in  examinations,  and  (where  the 
desire  to  keep  up  the  masculine  standards 
has  been  lost  sight  of)  the  in-breeding  and 
intensifying  of  sex-peculiarities,  through  de- 
sire to  remain  womanly,  though  educated — 
if  all  these  be  not  the  indices  of  the  sex  idea 
in  education,  one  knows  not,  indeed,  where 
to  look  for  them. 

But  even  more  significant  of  the  persist- 
ency and  power  of  this  underlying  thought 
has  been  the  result  of  the  higher  education, 
as  expressed  in  the  immediate  desire  of  the 
young  woman,  upon  graduation,  to  stake  out 
for  herself  a  career  in  the  world,  to  do 
something  that  shall  be  noticeable  if  not 
notable,  with  an  idea  of  proving  to  the 
world  that  she  can  do  a  man's  work  as  well  Atid  a  has 

, .       ,        .  .  ,  made    thein 

as  a  man,  displaymg  no  prepossession  what-   dissatisfied 

f  _     ,     .  7vith     their 

ever  m  lavor  of  domg  a  woman  s  work  as  o^vn  work. 
well  as  a  woman   can  do   it.     The  higher 
education  of  women  without   reference   to 

13 


77?^  Unquiet  Sex 


sex  seems,  thus  far,  to  have  resulted  greatly 
in  the  glorification  of  men  and  men's  work, 
and  in  dissatisfaction  with  women  and  wom- 
en's work— which  is  the  most  logical  thing  in 
the  world,  and  quite  to  be  expected,  so  long 
as  we  insist  upon  ignoring  certain  simple, 
radical,  dignified  distinctions  between    the 
sexes.     I  hasten  to  say  with  the  introduc- 
tion of  this  threadbare  and  somewhat  be- 
draggled phrase,  that  such  sex  distinctions 
as  I  have  in  mind  have  nothing  to  do  with 
any  childish  and  uneasy  comparison  of  the 
relative  endowment  of  the  sexes— that  can 
surely  be  trusted  to  take  care  of  itself  and  to 
expound  itself  fully  with  time  and  a  little 
judicious  negligence.     But,  as  things  are  at 
present,  with  half  the  capable  women  of  the 
world  doing   the   work   of  men,    and   the 
ivAy  we       other  half  wishing  they  could  do  it,  while 
"dtifon'Tn   the  whole  economic  situation  is  upset  by  the 
'"'"'^'  thousands  of  unfortunate  incapables  who  are 

only  trying  to  earn  a  temporary  and  unlucky 
living  until  they  can  marry  into  abetter  one, 
there  seems  to  be  a  desperate  need  of  some 
serviceable  division  of  labor  along  the  lines 

14 


The  Woman  Collegian 


of  sex.  And  since  it  is  to  be  devoutly 
hoped  and  expected  that  the  greater  part  of 
our  college  girls  will  not  be  educated  or  co- 
educated  out  of  the  good  old  fashion  of  mar- 
rying, and  taking  up  thereafter  the  noble 
profession  of  housewifery,  it  would  appear  to  why  net  cd- 
be  practicable  and  sensible  to  make  such  a  -aw7>tan  /or 

....  .   ,  ^  ,  her  life- 

sex-division  with  some  reference  to  the  spe-  work? 
cial  and  particular  knowledge  she  will  need 
in  her  life's  work,  just  as  one  puts  a  boy  into 
the  School  of  Mines  to  fit  him  for  a  civil 
engineer,  or  into  the  laboratory  to  make  a 
chemist  of  him.  For  the  day  has  gone  by 
when  the  profession  of  the  housevnfe  may  be 
considered  an  affair  of  enthusiasm  and  in- 
spiration alone.  It  has  come  to  be  sus- 
pected, even  by  the  non-participating  sex, 
that  its  capable  conduct  demands  a  knowl- 
edge of  all  the  learned  professions  and  all  the 
unlearned  trades,  of  most  of  the  liberal  arts, 
and  the  exact  and  inexact  sciences — physical, 
mental,  and  moral.  Therefore,  one  must 
feel  that  the  most  hopeful  and  helpful  move- 
ment in  the  entire  education  of  women  is 
the  establishment  in  some  of  the  women's 

15 


Tlje  Unquiet  Sex 


The     neces- 
sity/or 
something 
more  than 
facts. 


colleges  of  courses   in  domestic   science  or 
household  economics. 

I  know  the  argument  to  the  contrary;  I 
used  to  \^Tite  about  it  myself,  and  beheve  it, 
too;  but  that  was  before  the  serious  days 
settled  down  upon  me,  when  I  would  gladly 
have  exchanged  my  small  birthright  of  Latin 
and  Greek  for  the  ability  to  make  one  single, 
respectable  mess  of  anything  half  so  good  as 
pottage.     The  argument  is,  of  course,  that, 
given  a  certain  amount  of  intellectual  disci- 
pline and  general  training,  the  young  wom- 
an will    absorb  easily  enough  such  special 
facts  as  she  needs  when  the  time  of  their  use- 
fulness comes.     But  facts,  you  see,  are  apt 
to  be  solid  things ;  you  cannot  absorb  them ; 
you  must  work  them  over  into  something  else 
first — to  change  the  figure,  you  must  masti- 
cate them,  and  digest  them,  and  make  them 
a  very  part  of  your  bone  and  tissue  before 
they  can  be  of  much  service  to  you.     And 
this  is  not  to  be  done  when  a  sudden  emer- 
gency arises.     One  needs  something  more 
than   facts;    one   needs   that   last   product 
known  as  a  knowledge  of  facts,  in  the  pro- 

i6 


The  Woman  Collegian 


fession  of  the  housewife  and  in  the  presence 
of  the  cook. 

A  college  preparation  for  this  profession  is 
by  no  means  to  be  interpreted  as  any  dis- 
tasteful and  indelicate  preparation  for  the 
privileges  and  duties  of  an  estate  toward 
which  the  young  girl  has  not,  as  yet,  the 
slightest  inclination.  It  is  rather  a  simple 
and  dignified  recognition  of  the  sociological 
fact  that  women  and  the  home  and  all  the 
social  institutions  that  spring  from  it,  are  in- 
terdependent, and  that,  whether  we  are  will- 
ing as  yet  to  admit  it  or  not,  the  natural  and 
simple  division  of  human  labor  is  the  one 
that  assigns  to  women  the  duties  and  activi- 
ties that  centre  around  the  hearth.  The  first  women 
division  of  human  labor  was  undoubtedly  first  home- 
one  of  sex  in  those  days  when  Primitive  Man  fire-tend- 
went  out  hunting,  fishing,  or  fighting,  while 
his  primitive  wife  stayed  by  the  fire  to  keep 
it  [^bright  against  his  return,  and  to  develop 
such  rude  industries  as  grew  out  of  his  needs 
and  her  ingenuity  ;  and  I  make  so  bold  as  to 
say,  though  "with  trembling  pen,"  as  Mr. 
Zangwill  says,  that  I  have  never  been  able 

17 


Vjc  Unquiet  Sex 


to  see  why  women  should  quarrel  with  this 
division  of  human  labor,  or  feel  crestfallen 
over  it.     Either  it  was  accidental — in  which 
case  nothing  derogatory  either  to  women  or 
their  ability  is  assumed,  much  less  proved — 
or  else  it  sprang  from  causes  so  deep  as  to 
reach  down  and  enwrap  the  very  roots  of 
human  nature  and  the  first  conditions  of  hu- 
man society ;  and  then  there  is  no  use  in 
being  disturbed  about  it,  because  there  is  no 
chance  of  altering  it.     Nothing  is  so    un- 
changeable  as   those  instincts  and  convic- 
tions which  lie  at  the  base  of  human  nature 
to  keep  the  foundations  of  human  life  steady 
ivhy  Strug,    and  secure.    It  would  be  sad,  indeed,  if  the 
fatpfof'  present  struggle  against  sex  limitations  should 
things?         p^^^^g  ^^  l^g  ^  quarrel   with  the  nature  of 
things,  for,  as  Mr^^ljittfill  once  said,  "who- 
ever wittingly  or  unwittingly  quarrels  with 
the  nature  of  things  is  certain  in  the  long 
run  to  get  the  worst  of  it." 

The  health  of  the  college  woman  leaves 
something  to  be  desired.  But  it  is  Amer- 
icanitis  rather  than  the  college  education 

i8 


The  Woman  Collegian 


that  is  to  blame.  Americanitis  may  be  de- 
fined as  the  desire  to  "get  on,"  regardless 
of  everything  else.  It  is  Americanitis  that  American- 
prompts  the  farmer's  daughter  to  get  a  col-  feliao/'' 
lege  education  and  make  opportunities  for  woman'' 
herself  better  than  those  her  mother  and 
father  had  before  her.  Therefore  she  goes 
to  a  small  college,  in  a  small  town,  with  a 
preparatory  department  attached,  where  she 
often  begins  her  education  as  a  "junior 
prep."  She  furnishes  a  single  room  in 
which  she,  and  even  a  room-mate,  study, 
sleep,  eat,  make  their  clothes,  and  some- 
times do  their  laundering.  She  keeps  up  in 
her  studies,  joins  a  choral  class,  a  literary 
society,  and  the  Young  Women's  Christian 
Association  ;  goes  to  chapel  once  a  day  and 
twice  on  Sunday — and  very  often  falls  in 
love  and  "  gets  engaged  "  besides.  At  the 
beginning  of  her  senior  year  she  breaks 
down.  She  ought  to.  It's  the  very  least 
she  can  do  out  of  respect  to  herself  as  a 
human  being. 

The  situation  is  but  little  changed  in  the 
larger  and  richer  colleges,  where  the  great 

19 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


proportion  of  the  undergraduates  are   poor 
girls,  the  daughters  of  clergymen,  or  mis- 
Her  educa-  sionaries,  or  business  men  in  moderate  cir- 
ToXucVt'o  cumstances ;  girls  to  whom  their  education 
''"'•  is  the  means  to  an  end,  bread  and  butter 

and  bonnets  for  themselves,  certainly,  and 
perhaps  a  college  education  for  a  younger 
brother  or  sister.     Once  in  college,  an  am- 
bitious girl  is  sure  to  get  into  a  swim  of 
things  she  wants  to  do.     Besides  the  fifteen 
to  twenty  recitations  a  week,  without  which 
her  craving  for  knowledge  cannot  be  satis- 
fied, she  finds  a  world  of  smaller  interests, 
with  which  she  seriously  identifies  herself 
or  as  seriously  lets   alone.     There   are   the 
Philolethians  or  the  Idlers,  and  the  Colonial 
Dances  and  the  concerts  and  The  Shake- 
speare   Club,    and    the    lectures,    and   the 
many  complexities  of  new  thoughts  and  new 
personal  relations,  all  of  which  this  tense 
young  woman  wishes  to  take  at  a  gulp,  as 
Great  Opportunities  of  life,  and  with  a  so- 
lemnity that  defeats  their  very  end.     This 
is  perhaps  not  unnatural,  while  so  many  of 
our  American  girls  have  still  to  seek  their 


20 


The  Woman  Collegian 


U^ 


culture  elsewhere  than  in  their  own  homes, 
the  while  they  are  still  too  young  to  realize 
that  not  what  they  acquire,  but  what  they 
enjoy,  is  at  once  the  test  and  the  measure  of 
their  culture. 

Co-ordinate  with  Americanitis  as  interfer- 
ing with  the  health  of  the  undergraduate,  is 
her  inheritance  of  what  I  should  like  to  call, 
if  nobody  objects,  Johncalvinitis — meaning  johncaivin- 

1  /-111  1-1.        1  ^^"   awi/  Us 

that  contempt  for  the  body,  which  is,  let  us  conte„ipt 

1  11  •  ,-      -1  1  ■■     for  the  body, 

hope,    the    last   outcropping   of  those   old 
Puritan  ancestors  of  ours,  who  prayed  as  if 
they   had  JqsL  their   souls,   and   al£   as   if 
they  had  lost  their  bodies.     To  too  many 
American  women,  and  especially  to   those 
who  have  hard  work  of  any  kind  in  hand, 
eating  is  a  concession  to  the  flesh  which  is 
paid  grudgingly,  deprecatingly,  and  with  as 
much  haste  and  as  little  thought  as  possible. 
I  have  watched  the  undergraduate  eat,  and 
she  eats  badly.     She  chooses  her  food  ap- 
parently from  pure  caprice  or  from  a  person- 
al idiosyncrasy  that  ought  to  be  reformed. 
Doubtless    she    knows    very    well,    having 
learned  it  in  the  laboratory,  that  proper  nu- 

21 


77?^  Unquiet  Sex 


trition  is  secured  only  by  the  combination  of 
certain  food  substances  in  certain  propor- 
tions;  she  knows   the  use  in  the   body   of 
protein,  fats,  and  carbohydrates ;  neverthe- 
less, she  makes  her  luncheon  of  bread-and- 
butter  and  tea  and  pie,  if  she  feels  like  it, 
and  her  dinner  of  a  soup  and  a  salad.    There 
is  still  much  to  be  done,  you  see,  in  educat- 
ing the   gustatory  instincts   of  the  college 
woman,  as  undoubtedly  there  is  still  room 
for   improvement   in   the  composition   and 
preparation  of  the  daily  bills  of  fare  set  be- 
fore the  girls  even  in  our  largest  and  richest 

colleges. 

When  to  the  elemental  education  in  cook- 
ery which  the  ideal  college  for  women  is 
Tkene.iect-  going  to  supply,  there  is  established,  also, 
/L'^'./Xr  a  chair  of  gastronomy  for  the  education  of 
palate.         ^^^  American  palate  and    the   elevation  of 
the   American  mind  to  an   appreciation  of 
the  dignity  of  cooking  as  a  science  and  of 
eating  as  a  fine  art,  we  shall,  perhaps,  un- 
derstand that  the  ability  to  detect  with  ap- 
preciation the  subtle  blending  of  an  exqui- 
site sauce  or  salad,  and  the  power  to  make  a 


22 


The  Woman  Collegian 


harmonious  composition  of  companionable 
savors  in  a  single  meal,  is  as  distinctly  a  re- 
sult and  a  test  of  culture  as  the  appreciation 
of  the  eye  in  painting  or  of  the  ear  in  music  ; 
while  the  ability  to  set  forth  a  suave  and 
delicate  dish  as  the  product  of  one's  own 
skill,  possibly  contributes  as  much  to  the 
sum  of  good  in  the  world  as  a  moderately 
bad  translation  of  a  German  pessimist,  or 
even  a  new  manifestation  in  philanthropic 
possibilities.  Supposing,  for  a  moment,  that 
the  coming  century  were  to  have  in  it  the 
seeds  of  a  new  Carlyle,  it  might  be  consid- 
ered a  service  to  mankind  if  some  college 
woman  could  contrive  to  give  us  the  phi- 
losopher without  the  dyspepsia. 

The  attitude  toward  athletics  of  the  aver- 
age woman-undergraduate  is  usually  misun- 
derstood.    The  Sunday  illustrated  papers  to    The  college 
the  contrary,  very  few  college  women  live  in   not  love 


golf-clothes  or  sweaters,  or  wear  snow-shoes 
to  recitations.  On  the  contrary,  most  of 
them  detest  "gym.,"  and  evade  its  practice 
whenever   they  can,   by   any  allegation  of 

23 


^gym: 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


physical  infirmity  or  other  necessity.     Too 
often,  their  sole  concession  to  the  needs  of 
their  young  muscles  is  a  long  walk,  at  infre- 
quent intervals,  with  another  girl,  while  the 
two  talk  about  their  worries,  or  their  college 
work,  or  their  present  needs,  or  their  future 
purposes.     The   question  of  physical  exer- 
cise is,  as  any  college  president  knows,  one 
of  the  most  perplexing  in  the  college  life ;  its 
necessity  is  so  fundamental,  and  its  accom- 
plishment so  unsatisfactory.     And  yet  there 
is  something  too  natural    and   spontaneous 
in  the  rebellion  against  the  gymnasium,  to 
admit    of  the  reproof  that    prudence   sug- 
gests.    It  would  seem  as  though  the  young 
women    have   discovered    instinctively   for 
themselves   that,  at   its    best,  a   splendidly 
equipped  gymnasium  is  only  a  substitute  for 
the  real  thing,  and  that  its  purpose  has  to 
do  with  pathology  rather  than  physiology. 
And  it  is     The  true  physical  exercise  is  unconscious  of 
7ehur''io      self-improvement  as  its  purpose  or  end  ;  it 
''cZdit        is  pure  overflow.     The   gymnasium  is   for 
those  who  train  with  purpose  and  with  effort, 
but  the  ideal  exercise  is  not  work,  it  is  the 

24 


The  Woman  Collegian 


muscles  playing.  However,  as  things  are 
now,  with  the  forlorn  inheritance  of  over- 
worked nerves  and  underworked  muscles 
which  the  average  American  girl  brings 
into  the  world  with  her,  the  gymnasium  is 
a  necessary  remedial  agent.  Some  day,  it 
is  to  be  hoped,  we  shall  enter  upon  a  phys- 
ical estate  wherein  we  can  take  the  open 
world  for  a  place  in  which  to  play  ;  but  until 
that  day  comes,  until  the  entail  has  accumu- 
lated for  several  generations,  let  us  still  agree 
to  be  tolerant  of  the  gymnasium  as  a  distinct 
means  of  grace  and  growth,  both  literally 
and  figuratively. 

There  is  nothing  to  be  regretted  in  the 
fact  that  nineteen  out  of  twenty  young  wom-   Tkesadcase 

,  ,  of  the  tivejt- 

en  who  graduate  from  college  take  up  at  once  Ueth  giri, 
some  means  of  earning  a  livelihood.  The 
twentieth  girl,  who  does  not,  is  the  one  to 
be  pitied.  It  is  not  easy  to  say  which  is  the 
harder  to  bear  with  equanimity  and  philoso- 
phy :  the  postponements  of  youth  or  the  dis- 
illusionments  of  middle  age.  Perhaps  we  pay 
too  great  consideration  to  what  has  been 

25 


ne  Unquiet  Sex 


called  "the  decline  in  animal  heat,"  and  too 
little  to  the  demands  of  leaping  young  blood, 
in  whose  red  corpuscles  inheres  the  necessity 
for  instant  declaration  and  activity.     Thus  it 
is  that  the  twentieth  girl  often  finds  her  first 
year  out  of  college  the  hardest  one  in  her  life. 
After  four  years  of  definite  routine  work  in 
the  "sweet  serenity  of  books,"  with  like- 
minded   friends  to    give  zest  to  labor  and 
rest  to  recreation,  she  now  finds  herself  in 
a  world  with  which  she  has  grown  strangely 
out  of  touch.      The  home-life  has  become 
adjusted  to  her  absence,  and,  much  to  her 
surprise,    goes    on    smoothly    without    her. 
Some  of  the  girls  who  were  her  friends  before 
her  college  days  are  already  married,  and 
some  hopefully  engaged;  she  finds  young  men 
not  enthusiastically  prepossessed  in  favor  of 
the  woman  collegian,  and,  anyway,  the  cir- 
cles of  intimacy  are  already  escablished,  and 
she  stands  quite  outside.    She  must  begin  her 
social  life  all  over  and  on  a  different  plane 
of  taste.     ISIeantime,  with  noble  ambitions, 
but  with  unformed  purposes  and  undirected 
powers,   she  longs  mightily  for  something 

26 


The  Woman  Collegian 


definite  and  worthy  on  which  to  expend  her- 
self, and  this  she  usually  fancies  lies  outside 
the  home ;  for  she  is  not  yet  wise,  and  her 
philosophy  of  life  is  not  final,  therefore  she    whose  phi- 

•      •  11  11  -11     losopky    of 

does  not  see,  as  it  is  to  be  hoped  she  will  u/e  is  not 
later  on,  that  the  richness  and  rewards  of  a 
woman's  life  have  nothing  to  do  with  that 
Gospel   of  Ambition  of  which  she  has  pos- 
sibly heard  too  much. 

•Therefore,  if  the  young  woman  graduate 
have  any  desire  at  all  for  activity  outside  the 
home,  she  will  be  much  happier  and  healthier 
and  better  satisfied  with  herself,  if  she  can 
win  the  consent  of  a  doubting  father  or  an 
over-tender  mother  to  let  her  go  about  it  at 
once.  The  mere  fact  that  her  father  pos- 
sess^ a  competence  and  is  perfectly  willing  to 
continue  her  support  need  not  weigh  against 
her  wishes.  There  are  other  necessities  than 
dollar  ones.     If  the  girl  has  right  royal  good  Let  her 

.  .  ivorkin  any 

sense,  there  will,  in  time,  develop  m  her  char-   -way  she 


acter  areas  of  wisdom,  and  she  will  come  back 
all  the  more  contented,  after  her  little  fling 
in  the  busy  world,  to  marry  some  wisely 
chosen  and  fortunate  young  man,  or  to  com- 

27 


chooses. 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


fort  her  father  and  mother  in  their  decHning 
years,  and  hold  her  sway  in  the  home,  well 
sunned  and  ripened  by  her  added  experi- 
ence. Besides,  there  is  always  the  chance 
that  she  may  develop  real  talent  for  the 
work  she  has  undertaken,  and,  distancing 
her  brothers  in  the  race  for  fame,  become 
herself  the  family  pride  and  prodigy. 

Usually  a  baker's  dozen  or  more  of  the 
scne  of  the  nineteen  graduates  who  must  work  drift  into 
w  ?^:V  teaching.     Not  that  they  specially  like  it, 
1:g::L:n    or  fed  their  ability  to  shine  as  educators, 
but  because  it  is  the  work  that  lies  closest 
to  the  traditions  and  interests  of  the  col- 
lege  hfe,    and  because  it   is  still   the  one 
profession  into  which  the  door  swings,  most 
easily  for  women.    Hundreds  of  college-bred 
women  have  been,  and  are,   more   or  less 
capably  and  efficiently  engaged  in  teaching, 
and  a  few  have  gained  a  certain  distinction  as 
presidents  and  professors  in  colleges  for  wom- 
en, but  no  great  and  original  educator  has 
come  from  among  them.     Occasionally  a  de- 
termined young  graduate  gets  a  foothold  in 

28 


The  JVoman  Collegian 


a  newspaper  office,  and  usually  keeps  it  with 
credit  to  herself  and  her  higher  education, 
yet  the  few  women  editors  of  eminence  have 
not  been  college  bred,  and  there  is  nothing 
to  be  gained  by  concealing  the  fact  that  the 
college  women  who  have  undertaken  jour- 
nalism seem,  as  yet,  to  have  had  no  influ- 
ence in  sweetening  the  flood  of  sensational 
and  nasty  print  for  which  the  newspaper 
women  of  the  country  must  bear  their  share 
of  discredit  with  the  newspaper  men. 

The  number  of  college  women  who  have 
taken  up  medicine  is  considerable,  some  of 
them  no  doubt  from  a  real  love  of  science, 
and  some  for  love  of  a  career.  While  their 
work  has  been  able  and  their  success  un- 
doubted, it  is  just  to  say  that  they  have  not 
contributed  originally  to  medical  science. 
There  are  a  few  women  collegians  in  law,  in 
literature,  in  the  pulpit,  and  in  other  pro- 
fessions, and  their  helpfulness  and  enthusiasm 
have  been  especially  noticeable  in  educa- 
tional and  philanthropic  work;  they  have 
done  much  to  promote  University  Extension, 
in  the  upbuilding — not  to  say  the  uplifting 

29 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


— of  the  public  schools,  while  in  the  college 
settlements,  the  free  kindergartens,  and  the 
Their  ckrtr-  gracious  charitics  that  spring  therefrom  their 
%u"ntL.   tact  and  courage  have  been  unerring  and  un- 
^'"'  daunted.     In  all  these  fields  of  usefulness, 

the  work  of  college  women,  ''taken  by  and 
large,"  has   been  good,  honest,  competent 
work,  about  like  that  of  the  average  industri- 
ous man,  but  it  is  fair  to  say  that  it  has  been 
derivative,  not   creative,  complemental,  not 
brilliant,  offering  little  opportunity  for  sex 
celebration  on  the  part  of  those  enthusiasts 
who  have  believed  that  women  have  needed 
only  a  diploma  and  a  ballot  to  be  entirely 
equipped  for  conquering  all  the  world  that 
men  have  left  unconquered. 
The  most  The  most  notable  work   undertaken   by 

Zofkthey  college  women  in  thirty  years  of  opportunity 
'llTen"'^''"  is  one  which  is  still  in  its  infancy,  but  which 
developed,  will  do  more  for  that  eman- 
cipation for  which  believers  sigh,  than  all 
the  legislation  of  men  and  all  the  oratory  of 
women.  In  the  chemistry  of  foods,  the 
science  of  nutrition,  the  sanitation  of  the 
house,  the   economics   of  the   home,  their 

30 


The  Woman  Collegian 


work  has  been  both  original  and  thoroughly 
scientific.  It  has  not  only  added  something 
to  science,  but  has  opened  up  certain  new 
departments  in  special  sciences.  That  the 
one  original  contribution  of  college  women 
to  the  thought  of  the  world  should  be  along 
these  lines,  is  pleasing  and  significant,  for  it 
puts  the  most  efficient  work  of  the  educated 
woman  in  the  same  category  with  the  most 
efficient  work  of  all  other  women  —  with 
those  humanizing  and  conserving  and  elabo- 
rating forces  which  add  content  and  extent  to 
life,  and  which  are — when  shall  we  be  satis- 
fied to  learn  it  ?— just  as  fundamentally  im- 
portant, just  as  dignified,  and  (if  we  must 
also  be  heroic)  just  as  difficult,  as  the  con- 
structive and  creative  forces.  Perhaps,  also, 
the  suspicion  is  to  be  deduced  that  women 
are  contributing  most  helpfully  to  the  world 
when  they  are  willing  to  develop  those  abiH- 
ties  and  possibilities  with  which  custom,  or 
prejudice,  or  nature — call  it  what  you  will — 
has  made  them  most  familiar;  when  they  are  The  value 
not  working  in  the  direction  of  greatest  resist-  "^uTtie"^ 
ance ;  when  they  are  not  pulling  upstream.     ^'"''^'"^■ 

31 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


Be  that  as  it  may,  it  hardly  seems  that  the 
achievements  of  the  college  woman  are  as 
yet  remarkable  enough  to  cause  men  to  sit 
uneasily  upon  their  thrones,  or  to  fear  that 
they  will  be  asked  for  some  time  to  come  to 
step  down  and  take  off  their  crowns.  The 
college  woman  has  justified  herself  by  being 
hopefully  "average"  after  all.  The  educa- 
tion she  wanted  she  has  had ;  it  was  right 
and  just  that  she  should  have  it,  and  it  has 
done  her  good.  Possibly  it  will  do  her  still 
more  good,  when  she  is  able  to  forget  it,  or 
if  she  must  remember  it,  if  she  can  realize 
that,  in  having  it,  she  is  to-day  no  farther 
ahead  of  the  rest  of  the  world  than  her 
mother  was,  twenty-five  years  ago,  when  she 
carried  home  in  triumph  the  diploma  of  the 
academy  or  the  high-school  where  she  had 
finished  her  education. 


32 


WOMEN'S   CLUBS 


WOMEN'S   CLUBS 


ERNESTA  tells  me  much  of  what  I  know 
about  women's  clubs.  Ernesta  is  my 
intellectual  other  half,  who  as  to  her  own 
sex,  hopeth  all  things,  believeth  all  things, 
and  as  to  myself  certainly  rounds  out  the 
Scripture  by  bearing  all  things,  and  endur- 
ing all  things.  She  and  I  never  really  agree  ivhyEmes- 
on  any  subject  whatever  of  intellectual  im-   are  better 

than  7nine. 

port,  but  each  seems  always  about  to  con- 
vince the  other.  This  lends  continual  en- 
chantment to  an  otherwise  hopeless  situation. 
Ernesta  is  particularly  fond  of  women's  clubs, 
and  belongs  to  many.  One  club  meets  to 
read  papers,  on  Tuesdays  at  noon,  and  an- 
other meets  on  Fridays  at  four.  She  is  a 
member  of  a  woman's  political  league,  a  col- 
lege association,  a  health  club,  is  chairman 
of  two  philanthropic  societies,  raises  money 

35 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


a7t's  club. 


for  a  hotel  for  working-women,  and  holds 
a  class  for  the  study  of  Bach's  fugues  every 
Saturday  in  her  own  drawing-room.  I  be- 
long to  no  clubs  whatever;  from  which  it  is 
readily  to  be  seen  that  her  opinions  on  the 
subject  are  much  more  valuable  than  my 
own.  I  asked  Ernesta  the  other  day  to  de- 
fine a  woman's  club,  to  give  the  club  idea 
feminine,  in  as  few  words  as  possible.  She 
thought  profoundly  for  some  minutes,  then 
A  woman's  Said,  *'  A  woman's  club  is  an  association  for 
o/awom-  the  purposes  of  mutual  helpfulness  and  self- 
improvement.  '  * 

"But  you  have  luncheon,  don't  you?"  I 
asked. 

' '  Sometimes, ' '  she  answered,  and  her  voice 
had  a  deprecating  note.  "But  then,  you 
know,  we  should  have  to  eat  anyway ;  if  we 
eat  then,  there  is  just  so  much  time  saved, 
and  we  can  keep  on  with  the  discussion." 

Then  she  went  on  to  tell  me  about  a  cer- 
tain club  called  the  "Luncheon  Club," 
whose  inspiring  purpose  it  is  to  combine  the 
pleasures  of  the  intellect  with  the  duties  of 
the  palate,  by  meeting  once  a  fortnight  at 

36 


Women's  Clubs 


luncheon  for  the  discussion  of  questions  of 
the  day — political,  scientific,  sociological, 
religious,  revolutionary — whatever  is  excit- 
ing the  alert  public  mind  at  the  hour — nay, 
at  the  moment.  The  purpose  of  the  Lunch- 
eon Club  is  entirely  ambitious ;  the  luncheon 
merely  a  concession  to  human  weakness,  in- 
geniously contrived  so  as  to  yield  a  maximum 
of  return  in  knowledge  —  and  dyspepsia. 
Ernesta  regretted  that  she  was  unable  to  join 
this  club,  by  reason  of  a  non-lunching  club 
which  met  on  the  same  day — through  no 
mean  desire  of  the  luncheon,  mind  you,  but 
merely  because  the  scheme  recommended 
itself  to  her  as  converting  a  lowering  but 
necessary  function  into  a  higher  intellectual 
force — lunch-power  into  thought-power,  as 
it  were. 

Then  I  asked  a  man  to  define  a  man's 
club.     ' '  Well, "  he  said,  upon  reflection,  ' '  a  t^^^^s 
club  is  something  you  join  in  order  that  you 
may  stay  away  from  it  when  you  like. ' ' 

"/.?"  said  I.  "Oh,  no,  I  don't,  dear 
sir.  I  am  a  woman,  if  you  please.  I  should 
be  fined  if  I  stayed  away." 

37 


defin, 
of  a  f) 
club. 


434136    ' 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


"  From  a  woman's  club,  do  you  mean?  " 
he  asked.  "  Well,  that's  very  queer.  Fancy 
a  man's  being  fined  for  not  going  to  his 
club  !  "  And  this  seemed  both  to  amuse 
and  instruct  him  so  deeply  that  he  forgot  all 
about  me,  and  smoked  two  pipefuls  before  he 
got  around  to  saying  again,  "  Fancy  a  man's 
being  fined  for  not  going  to  his  club ! ' ' 

Ernesta  tells  me  that  one  million  women 
in  this  country  are  members  of  clubs,  and 
that  these  million  women  are  joined  in  one 
gigantic  association  called  the  General  Fed- 
eration, composed  of  about  five  hundred  in- 
dividual   clubs,    representing    nearly    every 
State,  and  that  each  State  has  also  its  smaller 
organization  known  as  the  State  Federation. 
The  nation-  Bcsidcs  the  regular  meetings  of  the  single 
zatian  of      local  clubs,  both  Federations  have  their  own 
clubs.  meetings,  the  smaller  ones  annually  and  the 

large  one  biennially.  This  federating  move- 
ment is,  she  tells  me,  eight  years  old  and 
began,  as  did  the  club  idea  among  women, 
with  Sorosis  of  New  York  City.  The  pur- 
pose of  all  these  clubs  is  earnest.     Some  of 

38 


Women's  Clubs 


them  are  for  study,  some  for  action,  but  all 
are  for  making  of  woman  "  a  practical  power 
in  the  great  movements  that  are  directing  the 
world,"  and  for  giving  her  the  ability  to 
serve  "the  highly  developed  and  complex 
civilization  that  is  awaiting  her  influence 
and  stands  sorely  in  need  of  her  assistance, ' ' 
to  quote  the  words  of  the  honored  president 
of  the  General  Federation. 

Well,  unrepressed  mental  activity  with  a 
purpose  is  better  than  unrepressed  activity 
without  any  purpose  at  all,  and  certainly  here 
is  a  high  aim  and  a  generous  intent  with 
which  it  seems  ungracious  enough  to  quarrel. 
But  it  would  appear  to  be  the  part  of  ordi-  a  simple 

,  ,  1      r  1  1   •  matter  of 

nary  prudence  that,  before  undertaking  so  prudence. 
large  a  mission  as  is  outlined  here,  the  one 
million  women  who  are  pledged  to  it  should 
sit  down  together  and  talk  it  over  with  some 
idea  of  finding  out  what  it  is  going  to  cost 
them  to  "serve  this  highly  developed  and 
complex  civilization,"  and  where  they  are 
likely  to  be  landed  when  the  work  is  done. 

For  the  sake  of  the  argument,  I  am  tak- 
ing for  granted  here  certain  premises  which 

39 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


I  think  might  fairly  be  disputed.  There 
seems  to  be  a  unanimous  opinion  among 
women  to-day  that  the  influence  of  their  sex 
has  never  before  been  so  potent  and  so 
needed.  This  much  is  certainly  true,  that 
never  before  has  so  much  been  said  about 
woman's  place  and  mission  in  the  universe. 
Yet  there  are  some  of  us  who  believe  that 
modern  research — historical,  scientific,  and 
sociological — has  set  forth  no  one  set  of  facts 
Are  women  with  more  seriousness  and  more  emphasis 
portance  to  thau  this,  that  the  contribution  of  the  wom- 

tke  world  r       n  •  i  i  ^       •     •■>• 

just  now      en  of  all  past  time  to  the  culture  and  civili- 

ihan  ever  .  -     ,  ,  ,  ,  ,     . 

before?  zatioH  of  the  racc  has  always  been  equal  m 
importance  and  dignity  to  that  of  men ; 
indeed,  there  are  not  a  few — and  strangely 
enough,  most  of  them  are  men — who  say  that 
it  has  been  greater,  and  that  all  the  social, 
and  nearly  all  the  religious,  fabrics  of  the 
world  are  built  around  women.  Mr.  Robert 
Grant  has  recently  said  that  women  seem  to 
* '  fancy  themselves  very  much  at  present,  and 
spend  considerable  time  in  studying  the  set 
of  their  minds  in  the  glass."  And,  to  be 
honest,  I  fear  we  are  in  no  position  to  resent 

40 


Women's  Clubs 


the  charge.  I  fear  we  are  in  great  danger  of 
taking  ourselves  and  our  achievements  with 
more  seriousness  than  their  vakie  warrants. 
No  doubt  we  are  doing  well  as  a  sex,  if 
ambition  and  ambulation  and  heroism  and 
hurry  count  for  anything,  and  there  is  cer- 
tainly no  doubt  that  we  are  doing  too  much. 
But  there  are  still  a  few  conservatives  left 
among  us  who  are  by  no  means  sure  that  the 
aspirations  of  the  leaders  among  women  to- 
day, coincide  with  the  highest  interests  of 
the  sex  and  the  greatest  general  good. 

All  these  assumptions  of  latter-day  superi- 
ority on  the  part  of  women  and  of  its  serious 
value  to  the  race,  is,  as  I  have  said,  fair  ground 
for  dispute ;  but  let  us  assume  that  women  are 
really  exerting  a  wider  and  a  higher  influence 
just  now  than  ever  before,  and  that  the  world 
still  needs  and  calls  for  more.     Then  the 
reason  for  this  tremendous  organizing  impulse 
appears  at  once.      Given  a  work  to  do,  or 
only  the  idea  of  a  work  to  do,  and  organiza-    Wethinkin 
tion  of  some  kind  is  inevitable.     This  is  the  i^jl"^'re"t 
hour  of  the  convention,   the  congress,   the   ^'''"""" 
mass-meeting.     We  think  in  by-laws  and  act 

41 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


in  resolutions.  Man  or  woman,  there  is  no 
way  but  that  of  unanimity,  even  to  the  ac- 
comphshment  of  the  most  personal  and  pri- 
vate virtues.  That  women  should  resolve 
themselves  into  clubs  and  declare  themselves 
in  constitutions  upon  the  slightest  provoca- 
tion is  only  to  be  expected.  And  if  women 
were  intended  ultimately  to  play  the  title- 
roles  in  the  big  drama  of  civilization  I  sup- 
pose the  grave,  earnest,  strenuous  note  of 
the  woman's  club  is  the  necessary  prelude. 
But  this  seems  to  me  very  sad,  because  it 
clearly  indicates  that  women  are  likely  to 
have  no  easier  time  of  it  in  the  future  than 
An  indict-  they  claim  to  have  had  in  the  past.  One 
Z'gainst  of  the  indictments  oftenest  brought  up  by 
*""  '  women    out   of    that   anthropological    past 

which  would  seem  to  be  little  enough  to  their 
credit  as  creatures  of  superior  endowment,  is 
that  men  have  persistently  taken  unto  them- 
selves most  of  the  good  things  of  life,  leaving 
to  women  the  particularly  unpleasing  and  ob- 
scure and  unrewarded  labors.  No  doubt 
there  is  some  truth  in  this,  and  there  would 
be  something  to  reprobate  in  it  if  men   had 

42 


Women's  Clubs 


thus  misbehaved  with  conscious  intent,  in- 
stead of  being,  like  women  themselves,  the 
somewhat  helpless  creatures  of  civilizing 
forces  that  were  stronger  than  they. 

I  have  always  had  a  deal  of  sympathy  for 
that  serviceable,  hard-worked,  abused,  and    The  most 

,        J      ,  .  J,    serviceable 

despised  creature  known  m  the  deductions  oi   and  »ns- 

.      .       used  person 

ingenious  historians — and  women — as  Prmii-  in  history. 
tive  Man — that  person  at  whose  doors  were 
first  laid  all  the  charges  from  which  his  un- 
happy male  descendants  have  since  suffered. 
He  was  big,  he  was  brutish  and  warlike,  and 
his  only  tastes  were  for  slaying  and  stealing. 
He  preyed  upon  mankind  openly,  and  in  his 
domestic  privacy  amused  himself  by  beating 
his  womankind  with  the  large  club  without 
which  he  is  not  to  be  imagined.  He  begat 
children  for  whom  he  had  not  even  the  love 
of  the  animal  for  its  young,  and  his  only  in- 
stincts toward  women  were  those  of  lust  and 
ferocity.  Primitive  Man  did  all  these 
things,  and  in  that  he  did  them  and  exulted 
in  them,  has  it  come  about  that  his  descend- 
ant has  set  his  foot  upon  the  neck  of  the 

43 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


woman  and  deliberately  willed  that  he  should 
be  her  master  and  tyrant  and  she  should  be 
forever  his  slave. 

One  must  be  led  to  wonder  with  one  of 
the  recent  historians  how,  with  the  strong- 
er half  of  the  race  continually  abusing  and 
ill-treating  the  weaker,  child-bearing  half, 
it  would  be  possible  to  account  for  the  con- 
tinuance of  the  human  species  at  all,  under 
conditions  so  severe.  But  allowing,  for 
the  sake  of  the  argument,  all  these  state- 
ments to  stand  in  unrelieved  unlovellness, 
it  still  does  not  appear  that  the  cause  of 
woman's  emancipation  should  have  needed, 
then  or  thereafter,  any  passionate  espousal. 
Theneces-  No  doubt  the  bchavior  of  Primitive  Man 
Tadbehav'  toward  his  womankind  would  be  reprobated 
'primitive  in  polite  circles  to-day.  No  doubt  he  beat 
his  wife,  but  he  also  beat  his  male  associ- 
ates, and  took  a  good  drubbing  in  turn  when 
he  was  indiscreet  enough  to  pitch  upon  an 
opponent  stronger  than  himself.  Nor  is  it 
difficult  to  believe  that  occasions  may  have 
arisen  when  the  man  took  his  first  lessons  in 
that  art  of  dignified  retreat,  which  he  has 

44 


Man. 


Women's  Clubs 


since  mastered  so  nobly,  by  dodging  an  elo- 
quent weapon  in  the  hands  of  some  woman. 
Such  possibilities  are  not  unknown  to  our  jt/Z'tun- 
gentler  days ;  and  there  are  worse  clubs  than  ^^^"'«  ^'^ 
the  primitive  ones.  I  have  myself  seen,  in 
public  gatherings  for  lady-orators,  gentlemen 
sit  like  smihng,  graven  images,  while  such 
hurricanes  of  feminine  wrath  and  invective 
swept  about  their  reddening  ears  as  only 
arguing  women  permit  themselves.  Such 
things  have  I  seen  and  heard  on  these  occa- 
sions, as  give  me  to  believe  that  the  place  of 
these  gentlemen  in  heaven  will  be  very  high. 
Primitive  Man  was  the  exponent  of  his 
own  times  and  his  own  civilization.  The 
struggle  for  existence  was  necessarily  a  phys- 
ical one,  and  physical  force  was  the  proper 
expression  of  that  desire  to  emphasize  the 
ego,  which  occasionally  visits  our  civilized 
bosoms  to-day.  And,  in  truth,  I  have  some- 
times thought  a  blow  the  least  harmful  and 
offensive  means  by  which  to  declare  our- 
selves, on  occasion,  even  now.  There  is  a 
brute  force  of  the  mind,  whose  wounds  go 
deeper  than    the  body.     If  the   child-man 

45 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


whipped  the  child-woman  or  was  whipped 
in  turn  by  her,  neither  of  them  needs  to  be 
severely  reprobated  therefor,  and  we  may  at 
least  cherish  the  hope  that  it  did  both  of 
them  as  much  good  as  it  does  in  the  case  of 
certain  small,  civilized  savages  to-day  ! 

Be  their  past  hardships  what  they  may,  the 
curious  thing  is  that,  directly  women  get  the 
chance  to  carry  out  to  any  extent  their  own 
idea  of  the  privileges  of  life,  they  develop 
none  of  that  taste  for  ease  and  irresponsibil- 
ity which  characterizes  the  normal  man.  In- 
stead, they  manifest  a  desire  for  self-expres- 
sion, for  relations  with  every  interest  and 
enterprise  of  the  present,  for  all  kinds  of 
responsibilities  and  hardihoods,  often  up  to 
the  supreme  hardihood  of  earning  their  own 
living,  even  without  necessity.  Therefore, 
if  a  man's  club  fairly  expresses  his  idea  of 
fun,  and  a  woman's  club  stands  for  hers,  it 
The  superi-  appears  at  once  how  vast  and  how  melan- 
Zilifn^en-  choly  is  the  superiority  of  the  man  in  the 
joy^ine  Aim.  g^^^j^  ^^^  ^^  eujoyiug  himself. 

There  are,  to  be  sure,  associations  of  men 

46 


Women's  Clubs 


whose  purpose  is  utilitarian,  such  as  political 
clubs,  or  business  or  professional  organiza- 
tions, but  no  man  befogs  himself  into  think- 
ing that  any  recreation  is  to  be  sought  or 
found  in  them.  They  fit  into  the  general 
serious  purpose  of  his  life  in  some  way,  and 
he  takes  them  as  he  does  other  duties,  and 
makes  as  much  or  as  little  of  them  as  pos- 
sible. But  a  man's  social  club  is  another 
matter.  It  is  a  privilege  and  a  pleasure, 
or  it  is  nothing.  It  is  based  on  the  prin- 
ciple of  exemption.  A  member  goes  to  it 
or  not  as  he  likes,  but  if  he  goes,  he  carries 
no  burden  of  duties  with  him.  He  has  some- 
thing to  drink  or  to  smoke,  or  a  game  of  bill- 
iards, if  he  wants  them.  He  talks  gossip 
(in  a  highly  elevated  and  impersonal  way,   Man  in  his 

.        club,  and 

of  course)  or  he  thrusts  his  hands  deep  in 
his  pockets  and  whistles  at  the  window.  If 
he  stays  away  for  three  hundred  and  sixty- 
four  days  (and  you  may  be  sure  he  does  stay 
away  if  he  wants  to),  and  comes  back  on 
the  three  hundred  and  sixty-fifth,  he  expects 
to  find  his  chair  just  where  he  left  it,  with 
the  ash-tray  and  the  afternoon  paper  at  its 

47 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


side,  and  he  betrays  an  immediate  sense  of 
injury  if  he  does  not.  He  considers  that 
one  of  the  things  he  pays  for  is  to  have  the 
club  go  on  in  his  absence  so  that  he  may 
feel  no  jar  on  his  return.  He  demands  of 
it  that  it  shall  stand  for  that  permanency 
and  unbroken  hospitality  which  make  it 
as  grateful  to  him  in  suggestion  and  mem- 
ory as  in  the  hour  of  enjoyment.  There- 
fore he  is  likely  to  misbehave  sadly  toward 
the  new  man  at  the  door  (who  is,  no  doubt, 
a  vastly  better  servant  than  the  old  one), 
until  the  new  face  gets  into  his  recollection, 
and  ceases  to  look  strange.  In  short,  a  man 
is  disposed  to  take  his  clubs  as  he  takes  other 
good  things  in  life — as  easily  as  possible — 
feeling  that  they  are  quite  his  right,  and 
that  his  enjoyment  is  sufficient  reason  for 
their  existence.  All  the  forces  of  a  man's 
club  are  centripetal,  and  have  the  comfort  of 
the  male  individual  as  their  centre. 

Woman  in  But  the  forces  of  the  woman's  club  are 
largely  centrifugal,  and  have  a  higher  aim 
than    mere   enjoyment.     They   are  for  the 

48 


Women's  Clubs 


enrichment  of  the  individual  largely  as  a 
means  to  the  assistance  and  improvement 
of  others.  Ernesta  herself  has  said  it  bet- 
ter than  I  should  have  dared — "A  club 
is  an  association  for  self-improvement  and 
mutual  helpfulness. ' '  Under  ' '  self-improve- 
ment "  are  to  be  included,  I  suppose,  all 
those  ambitions  by  reason  of  w^hich  ladies 
read  and  discuss  papers,  or  listen  to  endless 
lectures  upon  endless  subjects ;  while  the 
"helpfulness"  sums  up  all  those  benevo- 
lences, from  cleaning  our  public  highways 
to  cleaning  our  private  morals,  for  which 
women  have  developed  so  remarkable  a  taste 
within  the  past  few  years.  All  this  is  very 
noble,  no  doubt,  and  public-spirited,  and 
quite  in  keeping  with  the  ideas  set  forth 
thirty  years  ago  by  the  first  woman's  club  r/te  first 
in  the  country,  when  gentle  Alice  Gary,  club. 
sitting  in  the  president's  chair,  pleaded  for 
the  club  as  a  means  to  the  wider  and  fuller 
development  of  women — "  to  teach  them  to 
think  for  themselves  and  get  their  opinions 
at  first  hand,  ...  to  open  out  new 
avenues  of  employment  for  them,  to  make 

49 


woman  s 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


them  less  dependent  and  less  burdensome,  to 
lift  them  out  of  unwomanly  self-distrust  and 
disqualifying  diffidence  into  womanly  self- 
respect  and  self-knowledge ;  to  teach  each 
one  to  make  all  work  honorable  by  doing 
the  share  that  falls  to  her,  or  that  she  may 
work  out  to  herself  agreeably  to  her  own 
special  aptitude  cheerfully  and  faithfully, 
not  going  down  to  it,  but  bringing  it  up 
to  her." 

"  Now,"  says  Ernesta,  triumphant,  at  my 
shoulder,  "  you  must  acknowledge  that  when 
There  was  that  was  Written  there  was  room  for  mutual 
^ken.  "^  ^  helpfulness  among  women.  They  had  few 
amusements  of  an  improving  kind,  and  al- 
most no  stimulus  to  intellectual  advance- 
ment ;  they  were  self-distrustful,  incapable, 
dependent.  The  woman's  club  has  done 
more  than  any  other  one  thing  to  lift  them 
out  of  all  this,  and  now  you  want  to  cast 
discredit  upon  it  !" 

Upon  my  soul  I  do  not.  I  only  want  to 
extend  the  usefulness  of  the  woman's  club ; 
to  suggest  to  it,  since  its  impelling  motives 
have  always   been   missionary,   a  new  and 

5° 


Women's  Clubs 


serious  mission — the  mission  of  being  less 
serious. 

Much  of  what  Ernesta  says  is  true.  Al- 
lowing something  for  a  fashion  of  thought 
and  phrase  set  at  that  time  by  the  earnest 
followers  of  Mr.  Mill  and  his  question- 
begging  book,  these  words  of  Alice  Gary 
are  sadly  reminiscent  of  the  need  of  that 
''emancipation,"  which  enthusiastic  be- 
lievers declare  to  be  the  special  and  trium- 
phant movement  of  this  "Woman's  Cen- 
tury." But  it  may  be  well  to  admit  to 
ourselves  with  candor  that  the  sex  seems  ne arrival 
to  have  arrived.  The  average  American 
woman  is  hardly  to  be  suspected  to-day  of 
"  unwomanly  self-distrust  and  disqualifying 
diffidence."  She  has  no  legal  disabilities, 
she  may  enter  any  trade  or  profession  she 
likes,  have  a  college  education,  travel  alone, 
ride  a  horse  or  a  bicycle  astride,  and  influ- 
ence legislation  greatly,  if  she  cannot  do  it 
directly. 

*'Yes,"  admits  Ernesta,  ''women  have 
got  a  great  many  things  they  wanted  and 
ought  to  have  had  long  ago,  and,  whether 

51 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


you  admit  it  or  not,  the  club  has  been  of 
great  assistance  to  them.  Perhaps  it  is  true 
that  part  of  the  purpose  of  the  woman's 
club  is  accomplished,  but  you  make  no  ac- 
count of  one  of  its  most  important  and 
gratifying  uses  still  —  that  of  intellectual 
stimulation  and  culture. ' ' 

Well,  to  blurt  out  the  awful  truth  at 
once,  I  have  never  thought  so  highly  of  in- 
tellectual stimulation  as  I  have  of  some  other 
things  in  life.  It  is  by  no  means  proved,  as 
yet,  that,  as  a  power  upon  life,  the  intel- 
lect is  to  be  held  in  the  highest  esteem ; 
just  as  the  history  of  human  nature  does  not 
go  to  show  that  seeing  clearly  and  doing 
well  have  been  invariably  associated.  One 
man  or  one  woman,  with  that  extended  and 
clarifying  vision  which  is  occasionally  the 
flower  of  a  well-informed  mind,  but  is  of- 
tener  the  fruit  of  a  beautiful  spirit,  may  be  a 
greater  power  for  all  right-mindedness  than 
the  most  active  intellect,  under  the  most 
conscientious  stimulation.  And  as  to  the 
opportunity  for  culture  offered  in  the  wom- 
an's clubs,  it  seems   to   me  that   in   a  last 

52 


JVomen's  Chibs 


effort. 


analysis,   culture  is  found  to  elude  any  con- 
scious effort  to  acquire  it.     I  have  liked  to 
think   that  culture,  like  all  other  graces  of  True  cult- 
the  mind  and  soul,  is  not  attained  by  being  "Zsctou? 
too  greatly  sought.     It  ''droppeth  like  the 
gentle  rain  from  Heaven,"  and  in  solitude 
and  self-dependence.     It  is  a  "  quiet,  fire- 
side thing,"  which  neither  needs  nor  desires 
the   contribution    of    the    exchange   place. 
One  gets  it,  as  one  gets  grace  from  Heaven, 
in  the  seclusion  of  one's  closet,  and  as  "the 
guest  of  one's  own  soul."     And  so  far  as 
clubs  may  be  supposed  to  minister  to  real 
scholarship  and  culture,  I  make  so  bold  as  to 
say  that  no  club,  social  or  technical,  male  or 
female,  bond  or  free,  can  do  more  than  to 
receive  the  results  of  individual  scholarship 
and  culture,  or  offer  more  than  mere  stimu- 
lation.    Nor  are  these  to  be  despised — nay, 
they  are  good  in  themselves,   if  one  does 
not  make  too  much   of  them  ;    if   stimula- 
tion does  not  take  the  place  of  culture,  and 
if  an  appetite  for  insignificant  facts  is  not 
mistaken   for   serious   scholarship.     Neither 
is  the  usefulness  of  the  club  in  small  towns 

53 


ne  Unquiet  Sex 


to  be  overlooked.     Here  the  wheels  of  life 
go  more  slowly  than  in  the  larger  centres, 
The  citib      books  are  fewer,  and  often  the  resources  of 
towns.  the   individual   are   not   abundantly  devel- 

oped ;  though  sometimes,  indeed,  the  law  is 
otherwise,  and  one  finds  the  richest  endow- 
ments of  mind  and  soul  in  the  most  remote 
and  desert  places. 

But  usually  the  little  town  finds  in  the 
woman's  club  its  one  means  of  growth  and 
diversion,  even  though  the  work  undertaken 
is  sometimes  solemn  enough  to  make  a  Ger- 
man university  professor  laugh.  And  that 
is  reason  enough  for  its  existence.  Never- 
theless— that  was  a  profound  truth  of  Marga- 
ret Fuller's  :  "  The  soul  that  lives  too  much 
in  relations  becomes  at  last  a  stranger  to  its 
own  resources." 

To  go  back  to  that  cum  hoc,  propter  hoc 
assertion  of  Ernesta  as  to  the  efficiency  of 
clubs  in  the  advancement  of  women  :  Some- 
thing has  certainly  been  going  on  among  us 
women  for  the  last  sixty  years,  and  at  a  gal- 
loping  rate,  too.      Whether  we   have  ever 

54 


Women's  Clubs 


been  in  subjection  or  not,  we  are  out  of  it 
now  (greatly  instigated  and  assisted  thereto 
by  a  sex  we  have  despised  and  arraigned),    i^e  seetn  to 

have  gotour 

and  we  have  got  our  heads.     There  seems  to  heads. 
belittle  enough  left  i£>x_the  women  of  .the 
next  century  to  accomplish  in  the  way.joL. 

mere   emancipation,    and    to   the   glory  .  of, 

themselves  and  their  sex.  No  wonder  this 
has  been  called  the  Woman's  Centuryl  But"" 
it  is  well  to  remember  that  it  has  also  been  a 
marked  century  for  a  good  many  other  per- 
sons. In  it,  one  race  has  almost  disappeared 
from  the  face  of  the  earth,  another  has  been 
led  out  of  slavery,  and  the  blood  of  a  dozen 
others  has  passed  into  our  veins.  It  has 
been  the  century  of  democracy,  of  steam,  of 
electricity,  of  the  public  schools,  of  the 
growth  of  big  cities,  of  the  mower  and  reap- 
er, of  the  Hoe  press.  If  it  had  not  also 
been  the  century  of  woman's  advancement, 
that  fact  would  be  really  worth  mentioning. 
The  invention  of  machinery  alone  has  affect-  *■  -_ 
ed  women  more  than  it  has  men,  both  by 
its  substitution  for  hand- work  in  the  hgige, 
and  by  drawing  them  at  once  from  the  safety 

55 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


and  dignity  of  their  own  firesides  into  the 
factories  and  the  great  whirl  of  industrial 
life,  thus  making  of  them  an  economic  prob- 
lem whose  value  is  still  uncertain.  It  would 
be  pleasant  and  self-satisfying  to  agree  with 
Ernesta  that  we  women  and  our  clubs  have 
done  our  own  emancipating,  but  when  we 
can  sit  down  and  think  out  this  same  con- 
clusion in  terms  of  half  a  dozen  other  agen- 
cies, I  fear  we  shall  have  to  regard  the  assump- 
tion as  one  of  those  fine  but  undigested  ideas 
which  seem  to  have  a  special  attraction  for 
our  sex.  The  truth  seems  to  be  that,  to  the 
wonderful  and  wide  opportunities  of  this 
century,  women  have  responded  with  an 
eagerness,  an  insistence,  and  a  disposition  to 
carry  things  to  extremes  which  cause  some 
of  the  more  conservative  of  us  to  stop  and 
ask  seriously  whether  this  restless  activity 
among  women  is  not  hectic  rather  than  nat- 
Over-activ  ural.  For  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that 
\ytnptom  of  there  is  an  eagerness  of  disease  as  well  as  of 

disease,   not    ,        ,,,  -^    ^  ,  11 

0/ health,  health.  1  know  two  women  who  have  ner- 
vous prostration  at  the  present  hour.  One  of 
them  has  insomnia,  and  because  she  cannot 

56 


IVomen's  Clubs 


sleep,  writes  innumerable  papers  for  her  club. 
She  now  has  several  pounds  of  wisdom,  on 
widely  varying  subjects  locked  up  in  her 
desk — all  of  which  she  regards  as  so  much 
clear  gain.  The  other  explains  that  she  is 
so  restless  as  not  to  be  able  to  sit  still  long 
enough  to  "  do  "  her  back  hair ;  therefore 
she  has  learned  how  to  carry  on  this  enter- 
prise while  walking  up  and  down  the  room, 
and  the  doctor  threatens  her  with  the  hor- 
rors of  the  rest  cure.  Let  us  devoutly  hope 
that  the  next  century  may  not  be  Woman's 
also,  lest  it  bring  us  even  greater  earnest- 
ness than  this  ! 

For  one  of  the  special  confusions  of  the    The  case 

against 

situation  is  that  we  seem  to  have  got  what  we  -womaK. 
wanted  without  knowing  exactly  what  to  do 
with  it.  We  are  still  on  nervous  tiptoe  ;  we 
make  duties  even  of  our  pleasures,  and  we 
lack  conspicuously  in  that  sense  of  propor- 
tion— that  sense  of  the  real  values  of  things 
— which,  if  it  be  not  essential  to  one's  salva- 
tion in  the  next  world,  is  certainly  essential 
to  one's  salvation  in  this.  ''  We  sow  hurry, 
and  reap  indigestion ;  "  we  cultivate  our  as- 

57 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


pirations,  and  are  landed  in  a  typical  case 
of  neurasthenia ;  we  tipple  all  kinds  of  intel- 
lectual stimulants — not  to  say  intoxicants — 
and  then  we  wonder  that  our  knowledge  of 
things  is  not  steadier  and  more  serviceable. 
I  sometimes  wonder  if  there  are  not  plenty 
of  women  to-day,  conscientiously  weighted 
down  with  the  burdens  of  progress,  who 
would  gladly  exchange  all  the  privileges  of 
"emancipation"  for  the  exemptions  of  a 
lesser  liberty.  It  was  with  no  smile  of  self- 
gratulation  that  I  came  upon  this  passage 
not  long  ago  in  one  of  Hannah  More's  let- 


jn  Hannah  ters :     "  Womcn    are    from    their   domestic 
days.  habits   in    possession    of  more   leisure   and 

tranquillity  for  religious  pursuits,  as  well  as 
secured  from  those  difficulties  and  strong 
temptations  to  which  men  are  exposed  in  the 
tumult  of  a  bustling  world.  Their  lives  are 
more  regular  and  uniform,  less  agitated  by 
the  passions,  the  businesses,  the  contentions, 
the  shocks  of  opinions,  and  the  opposition 
of  interests  which  divide  society  and  con- 
vulse the  world."  If  the  average  intelligent 
American  woman  with  a  family  and  a  house 

58 


Women's  Clubs 


to  look  after,  one  or  two  clubs  to  attend,  a 
moderate  interest  in  public  affairs,  and  a  rea- 
sonable social  ambition,  leads  a  life  "less 
agitated  by  the  passions,  the  businesses,  the 
contentions,  the  shocks  of  opinions,  and  the 
opposition  of  interests,"  either  my  observa- 
tion must  be  most  defective  or  my  experience 
most  unfortunate. 

Truly,  to  strike  a  brave  and  generous 
average  between  duty  to  one's  self  and  desire 
for  others  is  the  highest  task  of  wisdom. 
One  wishes,  of  course,  to  be  neither  a  shirk 
nor  a  parasite.  Yet,  surely,  there  should  be 
somewhere  in  life  occasional  garden-spots 
wherein  one  may  walk  lightly,  and  with  ease 
of  heart  concerning  one's  self  and  one's 
neighbor,  without  deliberate  and  selfish 
purpose  of  self-improvement  or  any  imperti- 
nence of  bestowal  upon  others.     And  if,  in   Onegreen 

...  .  ^    .  .         .  .  ,       and  shady 

the  unambitious  intercourse  of  friends,  with  spot  in  u/e. 
sympathy  and  a  happy  certainty  of  response, 
there  be  not  such  a  green  and  shady  spot, 
I  know  not,  indeed,  where  to  look  for  one. 
Moreover,  it  is  just  this  ease  in  intercourse  of 
which  women  stand  most  in  need.     If  our 

59 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


doctrine  of  life  must  be  heroic,  then  the  ten- 
sion must  be  the  oftener  relaxed.  If  women 
needed  stimulation  and  opportunity  forty 
years  ago,  we  need  to-day  strength  more  than 
stimulation,  and  capacity  rather  than  oppor- 
tunity. We  need  repose,  leisure,  and  that 
sense  of  ample  self-possession  which  comes 
from  the  habit  of  "staying  at  home  in  one's 
mind." 
The  higher       Here  is  the  higher  mission  of  the  woman's 

viission   of 

thewomati's  club — to  give  women  the  occasional  chance 

club.  ° 

to  rest,  both  in  mind  and  body.  For  such  a 
club  as  this,  developed  along  the  lines  of 
ease,  of  relaxation,  of  pure  vacuity  if  one 
wished,  with  exemption,  and  not  responsi- 
bility, as  its  first  privilege,  above  all,  with 
abundant  inclination  in  the  souls  of  its  mem- 
bers toward  nothing  but  that  profitable  idle- 
ness which,  as  Mr.  Stevenson  says,  consists 
not  so  much  in  doing  nothing  as  in  doing  a 
great  deal  that  is  not  usually  recognized  as 
work — for  such  a  club  it  would  be  almost 
worth  while  to  become  a  propagandist !  For 
here  no  insidious  desire  for  work  would  be 
allowed  to  masquerade  under  the  guise  of 

60 


Women's  Clubs 


recreation,  and  no  amount  of  recreation 
would  serve  to  carry  any  ulterior  purpose  of 
self-improvement.  There  would  be  luncheon 
for  luncheon's  sake,  and  women  would  sit 
down  to  eat  it,  greedy  and  unashamed.  And 
you  may  be  sure  there  would  be  no  papers 
read,  and  no  members  fined  because  they 
were  not  there  to  listen  to  them.  Thus  a 
normal  and  natural  intercourse  would  be  pro- 
moted in  which  the  self-improvement,  though 
incidental  and  half  unconscious,  would  be 
real  and  permanent,  because  developed  upon 
the  plane  on  which  the  individual  custom- 
arily dwells. 

Ernesta  tells  me  that  there  is  a  growing    The  estab- 

.  .  hsiiment  of 

desire  among  the   wealthy    and    mnuential  homes/or 

,  r  ^  cllibs. 

women's  clubs  to  build  club-houses  for  them- 
selves, that  some  few  have  already  been  built 
and  others  are  devoutly  projected,  and  when 
I  hail  this  as  special  cause  for  congratulation, 
since  all  these  higher  uses  of  the  club  will 
begin  with  permanency  in  residence,  she 
cools  the  fervor  of  my  delight  by  saying 
that  none  of  the  club-houses  she  knows  any- 

6i 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


There  is 
something 
better  than 
being  in- 
structed. 


thing  about  are  especially  designed  for  the 
frivolous  purposes  I  have  outlined.  ' '  There 
isn't  a  restaurant,"  she  explains,  "or  such 
lounging-rooms  as  men  enjoy,  and  as  you 
seem  to  consider  the  only  things  worth  hav- 
ing about  a  club.  There  are  rooms  for  meet- 
ings of  different  kinds,  from  a  large  audi- 
torium to  small  committee-rooms.  There  is 
a  writing-room,  usually,  and  a  library,  and 
sometimes  a  free  kindergarten  or  a  working- 
girls'  club  has  quarters  under  its  roof,  since 
the  building  is  intended  for  rational  purposes 
and  for  women  with  earnest  and  rational 
minds." 

Yet  money  spent  for  earnest  and  rational 
club  purposes  alone,  seems  to  me  money  only 
half  spent,  since  a  club  is  hardly  to  be  con- 
sidered as  a  business  enterprise,  or  a  philan- 
thropic manifestation,  or  an  educational  in- 
stitution, but  only  an  added  area  in  the  small 
personal  life.  And  I  shall  continue  to  hope 
earnestly  for  the  coming  of  the  day  when 
some  woman's  club  shall  rise  to  a  new  dec- 
laration of  dependence,  and  confess  that  it 
is  tired  of  being  instructed  and  wants  to  be 

62 


Women's  Clubs 


amused ;  when  my  dear,  hurried,  clubbed 
sisters  may  be  willing  to  take  their  "  little 
gift  of  being  clean  from  God,  not  haggling 
for  a  better ;  ' '  content  even  in  their  limi- 
tations ;  satisfied  to  know  less  and  be  more ; 
glad  to  let  the  savor  of  happy  intercourse 
(though  without  profit)  have  its  rightful 
place  in  that  complete  living  which  would 
not  be  complete  without  it. 


63 


WOMEN   AND    REFORMS 


WOMEN  AND  REFORMS 

NOT  long  ago,  a  man,  a  busy  and  sue-  '  "7''''  '" 
cessful  editor,  who  has  an  unusual  way       j^'' 
of   ruminating  facts    until    he   gets   all  the 
significance   possible   out    of  them,  said    to 
me,   "Have  you    ever  thought   of  this? — 
there  are  in  this  country  at  the  present  time 
an  unusual  number  of  capable  and   conspic- 
uous women,  at    the  head  of  distinguished 
political  or  educational  movements  and  re-    The  classes 
forms,  or  administering  unpaid  public  offices  "-^hoTaTeup 
with  great  tact  and  charm,  and  with  some  ^^■^'"'""• 
helpfulness.     Now,  if  one  were  fully  to  in- 
form himself  as  to  the  station  in  life  of  these 
busy  persons,  he  would    find,  I  think,  that 
they  are,  almost    Avithout    exception,  either 
women  of  great  wealth,  having,  consequently, 
abundant  leisure  and  the  power  to  destroy  it, 
unmarried  or  childless  women,  or  self-sup- 

67 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


porting  women  whose  business  interests  are 
supposed  in  some  way  to  be  forwarded  by 
publicity." 

Yes,  I  had  thought  about  it  in  a  desultory 
and  unproductive  fashion. 

"Well,  go  on  thinking  about  it  and  you 
will  find  conclusions  ahead  of  you  some- 
where, if  I  am  not  mistaken." 

I  did  go  on  thinking  about  it,  and  he  was 
not  mistaken,  but  the  first  conclusions  I  ar- 
rived at  (to  put  it  in  the  pleasant  Hiber- 
nian fashion)  were  questions.  Which  is  cause 
and  which  effect  ?  Is  it  public  service  for 
public  service's  sake  or  for  publicity's  sake  ? 
Is  it  not  possible  with  leisure  and  the  con- 
sciousness of  money-power  to  develop  a  kind 
of  epicurean  taste  for  reforms,  as  for  the 
other  pleasures  of  life  ?  Are  Ave  in  danger  of 
making  a  fad  of  what  must  be  really  a  very 
solemn  undertaking,  when  one  considers  that 
a  reform  is  necessarily  a  readjustment  of 
creation,  and  that  if  it  comes  to  anything 
Somegues-  more  than  an  experiment  in  reform,  it  must 
i^t^answ^r.  be  about  as  serious  a  matter  as  creation  it- 
self?    I  have  not  yet  answered  any  of  these 

68 


Women  and  Reforms 


questions  with  satisfaction  to  myself.     Can 
anybody  give  me  a  ray  of  light  ? 

So  much  for  the  first  conclusions,  which, 
as  you  see,  were  no  conclusions  at  all,  and 
perhaps  the  second  were  like  unto  them,  for 
the  one  serious  matter  I  settled  with  myself 
was  that  I  did  not  agree  with  my  friend  as  to 
the  limitation,  among  women,  of  this  taste 
for  public  affairs.  So  far  as  my  own  observa- 
tion goes,  most  women  have  it,  to-day,  to  a 
greater  or  less  degree,  and  have  had  it,  with 
different  manifestations,  ever  since  the  days 
when  their  Puritan  fathers  and  husbands 
pushed  into  reforms,  having  not  yet  taken 
the  time  to  push  out  of  the  wilderness.  In 
those  early  days  of  transcendentalism  in  New 
England  (which  must  have   been    glorious    Thegiori- 

r  ■  •  •  r  Ti  T  ""'  days  of 

times  for  the  reforming  instinct,  for  as  Mr.    early  re- 


Lowell  says,  there  was  "  no  brain  but  had  its 
private  maggot,  which  must  have  found 
pitiably  short  commons  sometimes"),  it  is 
evident  that  women  were  deeply  involved, 
from  the  very  nature  of  the  reforms  them- 
selves, which  were  such  as  women  would 
naturally  gravitate  to.     These  dealt  not  only 

69 


form. 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


The  desire 
/or  reform 
in  every 
earnest 
vtan  or 
woman. 


with  the  establishment  of  communities, 
where,  as  one  chronicler  has  it,  "  everything 
was  to  be  common,  except  common-sense," 
and  with  a  reversion  to  labor  upon  land, 
which  was  declared  to  be  the  only  work  in 
which  men  could  lawfully  engage  ;  but  there 
were  those  who  wished  to  do  away  with  yeast, 
and  eat  unleavened  bread,  fermentation  being 
considered  an  unholy  and  unwholesome  proc- 
ess ;  there  were  persons  who  attacked  but- 
tons as  allies  of  the  devil,  and  other  means  of 
locomotion  than  legs,  and  marriages,  and 
miracles,  and  the  ordinary  courtesies  of  ex- 
pression— from  all  of  which  it  is  indubitably 
to  be  inferred  that  many  of  the  prophets 
''wore  combs  at  the  backs  of  their  heads." 

Now,  the  desire  for  reform  is  by  no  means 
to  be  decried,  since  it  must  make  an  essential 
part  of  the  working  capital  of  every  earnest 
man  or  woman.  Heaven  forbid  that  any 
word  of  mine  should  be  interpreted  as  re- 
motely casting  levity  (which  is  worse  than 
casting  discredit)  upon  any  attempt  on  the 
part  of  anybody  toward  that  strenuous 
"reach  to   exceed   one's  grasp"  which   is 

70 


Women  and  Reforms 


"  what  a  heaven's  for."  Yet  since  we  wom- 
en (I  see  no  derogation  in  acknowledging 
it)  are,  by  that  entire  physical  and  mental 
organization  generally  known  as  tempera- 
ment, more  inclined  to  extremes  in  all  things 
than  men  are,  it  appears  wise  to  me  that  we 
should  suspect  the  desire  for  reform  whenever 
we  can  see  that  it  has  passed  onward  from  a 
latent  quickening  heat  into  open  excitement. 
To  be  able  to  sit  down,  beforehand,  to  a 
cool  and  impartial  scrutiny  both  of  the  ani- 
mating spirit  of  our  reforms  and  of  their  ob- 
jective and  subjective  results,  seems  to  me 
wholly  necessary  before  we  can  be  sure  that 
we  are  not  undertaking  reform  for  reform's 
sake  alone,  or  that,  in  the  high  and  unselfish 
purpose  which  is  prompting  us,  we  are  not  Something 

.  r      1  1-1       better  than 

losmg  some  adornments  of  character  which  reforms. 
are  greatly  worth  keeping. 

It  may  or  may  not  be  worth  comment 
that  during  the  early  days  of  reforms  in  this 
country  there  were  more  men  reformers  than 
women  ;  but  that  later  on,  dating  perhaps 
from  the  Civil  War,  the  number  of  reforms 
instituted  by  women  is   the   greater.     Per- 

71 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


haps  this  bears  out  my  editor's  suspicion  that 

leisure  and  wealth  and  the  power  it  buys,  are 

n^hat  has     at  the  bottom  of  half  our  reforms,  as  well  as 

■wealth  to  r    t      -i  r  •       ^    ■     r 

do  with  of  half  our  mischiefs.  At  any  rate,  the 
number  of  public  affairs  we  poor  women 
have  to  look  after  nowadays  must  be  either 
exceedingly  gratifying  or  exceedingly  dis- 
heartening, according  to  one's  point  of 
view.  We  seem  to  have  the  health  of  the 
country  wholly  in  our  hands  (at  least,  one 
is  inclined  so  to  fear,  contrary  to  what  one 
has  been  taught  to  believe  about  microbes 
and  bacteria,  to  say  nothing  of  an  all-wise 
Creator  whom  we  used  to  credit  with  some 
sense  of  responsibility  for  the  world  He  has 
made)  ;  we  have  kindergartens,  and  the 
Alaska  Indians,  and  sanitary  plumbing,  and 
doing  away  with  distinctions  of  sex  in  work, 
and  the  introduction  of  patriotic  teaching 
in  the  public  schools,  and  the  higher  educa- 
tion of  parents,  and  dress  reform  and  many 
more  things  of  like  gravity,  which,  like  the 
apostle,  I  have  not  time  to  speak  of  now. 

Now,  very  likely,  all  these  things  are  good 
to  do,  and  to  be — and  to  suffer,  too,  if  one 

72 


Women  and  Reforms 


is  able  to   "drink  fair"  in  the  matter  of 
reforms,  and  to  take  as  well  as  offer  an  appro- 
priate opportunity  for  improvement.     But  it   "Drink 
seems  to  me  most  essential  that  we  should  sey,  w'ot- 
not  lose  what  the  Germans  call  Uebersicht,   do." 
in  our  zeal,  and  that  we  should  remember, 
however  necessary  it  may  be  to  the  world 
that  any  reform  should  be  instituted,  it  is 
surely  of  much  more  importance  both  to  the 
world  and  the  reform — to  say  nothing  of 
ourselves — that  the  reformer  herself  should 
be  sane  and  pleasing — particularly  pleasing. 
For  here,  my  friends,  I  stoop  to  plead  the 
cause   of  unreformed    feminine   nature.      I 
have  never  been  able  to  see  why  any  one  of 
us  should  be  ashamed  of  a  desire  to  please — 
even  to  please  men.     Could  women's  desire 
go  farther,  on  the  whole,  even  in  post-mor- 
tem vanity  than  the  epitaph  Mr.  Lowell  was 
so  fond  of  recalling,  "  She  was  so  pleasant?" 
For  myself,  in  honest  confession,  I  would 
rather  be  pleasant  than  be  President,  and  St. 
Paul  defend  me  if  I  imitate  his  example  and 
speak  these  words  as  a  fool ! 

One  of  the  regrettable  things  about  the 

73 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


The  persist- 
ence of  the 
re/orniato- 
ty  instinct. 


reformatory  instinct  is  its  persistence.  If 
one  could  only  occasionally  be  a  reformer 
and  anon  come  back  to  one's  quiet  and  pas- 
sive provincialism,  the  case  for  the  reformers 
would  be  proved  at  once.  But  a  taste  for 
reform  is  like  a  taste  for  the  luxuries  of  life 
— one  seldom  gets  over  it.  This  in  the  case 
of  women  is  particularly  to  be  deplored,  be- 
cause there  is  likely  to  result  a  habit  of  mind 
and  behavior  more  or  less  egoistic,  down- 
right, declaratory,  and  dead-in-earnest,  while 
most  of  us  still  like  our  women  as  Sairey 
Gamp  liked  her  porter — "drawed  mild." 
Why  not  ?  Is  there  any  advantage,  in  the 
nature  of  things,  in  severity  and  strenuous- 
ness  over  mildness  and  serenity  ?  Can  we  be 
certain  that  the  latter  have  not  a  surer  vital- 
ity of  their  own  ?  It  is  to  the  meek  and  not 
to  the  dead -in-earnest  that  the  inheritance  of 
the  earth  is  promised,  and  at  least  it  is  to 
be  conceded  that  in  mildness  and  serenity 
is  found  the  antidote  to  the  strain  and 
tension  which  the  acceleration  of  the  age 
puts  upon  us  all.  Possibly  here  is  still  an- 
other mission  for  women — or  will  be,  when 


74 


Women  and  Reforms 


we  get  the  composure  to  consider  it ;  that  of 
putting  ourselves  and  our  influence  on  the 
side  of  nature,  all  of  whose  forces  are  calm 
and  leisurely,  and  whom  even  the  American 
himself  has  found  no  way  to  bully  out  of  her 
supreme  composure.  Let  us  thank  heaven 
and  take  courage  that,  with  all  the  changes 
which  the  environment  of  civilization  has 
brought  about  in  the  human  being,  whenever 
he  depends  upon  nature  he  must  still  con- 
form to  her  tranquil  ways.  He  can  digest 
no  faster,  though  he  may  be  able  to  digest 
more  badly  than  the  first  man  did,  he  must 
still  sleep  eight  hours,  and  he  has  not  yet 
shortened  his  leisurely  prenatal  life. 

All  this  national  misbehavior  on  the  part 
of  men  is  bad  enough,  but  it  seems  to  me 
infinitely  worse  when  we  come  to  women, 
for  I  do  not  see  how  it  is  possible  to  evade 
the  conclusion,  as  indicated  by  the  supreme 
functions  and  most  imperative  duties  of 
women,  that  they  were  meant  to  live  closer  to    Watnan's 

relation  to 

nature  than  men  were,  to  be  a  very  part  of  Nature. 
its  great  orderly  processes,  and  to  have  the 
inestimable  privilege  of  sharing,  if  they  \nll, 

75 


Vje  Unquiet  Sex 


in  its  simplicity,  its  largeness,  its  tranquillity, 
its  unconscious  patience.  If  this  be  true, 
and  I  like  to  believe  that  it  is,  it  seems  to 
me  most  essential  that  in  our  desire  to  per- 
form one  set  of  duties  we  should  not  lose 
sight  of  another  still  more  important  set, 
that  we  should  keep  our  sense  of  perspec- 
tive, and  not  mistake,  even  in  reforms,  the 
false  need  for  the  real  one ;  that  we  should 
be  able  to  discriminate  between  the  right- 
eous necessity  for  fundamental  adjustment 
and  the  mere  desire  to  relieve  our  feelings. 

"Is  reform  needed?"   asks  Walt  Whit- 
man.     "Is  it   through  you?     The  greater 
Whitman's    the  rcform  needed   the  greater  personality 

test /or  T   1       •      u        T 

reformers,  you  need  to  accomplish  It.  Let  us  see. 
Is  reform  needed?  Not  always.  A  num- 
ber of  men  and  women,  all  good  and  wise, 
and  in  evening-dress,  may  meet  together 
and,  discovering  a  great  evil  or  a  real  abuse, 
may  decide  that  something  ought  to  be 
done,  and  set  about  doing  it  at  once.  Yet 
it  by  no  means  follows  that  because  things 
are  out  of  joint  no  duty  remains  but  to  set 
them  right.     It  is  not  quite  enough  that  a 

76 


Women  and  Reforms 


reform  should  be  desirable  or  even  neces- 
sary ;  it  must  also  be  inevitable.  And  when 
it  is  inevitable  it  "hath  a  way  "  of  its  own. 
It  seems  then  to  be  set  in  motion  by  an  in- 
ner spiritual  vitality,  rather  than  from  any 
mechanical  and  outside  force.  And  when 
the  reform  is  accomplished,  it  is  usually  to 
be  observed  that  it  seems  to  have  moved 
with  a  curious — almost  human — perversity, 
never  in  the  obvious  or  direct  line  toward 
its  end,  but,  bringing  up  its  reinforcements 
from  unexpected  quarters,  its  march  has  been 
through  a  series  of  zigzags,  leading  sidewise, 
backward,  anywhere  but  along  the  simple 
straight  line  upon  which  our  convictions 
have  settled  as  the  one  practical  method  of 
approach.     The  genius  of  reform,    like  the    The^.-nhn 

/-     1        >~.  1         of  reform. 

genius  of  the  German  sentence,  seems  to  be 
for  "yawing  and  backing,  for  getting  stern 
foremost  and  for  not  minding  the  helm." 

Nothing  better  betrays  this  delightful  sense 
of  humor  in  the  spirit  of  reforms  than  that 
reform,  at  once  the  most  complicated,  the 
simplest,  the  most  long-suffering,  most  en- 

77 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


refortn. 


deared  to  the  hearts  of  women — dress-re- 
form. It  is  hardly  to  be  supposed  that  the 
dress-reforming  spirit  is  a  product  of  mod- 
ern times,  since  we  find  the  necessity  of  it 
enjoined  upon  women  as  far  back  as  Bible 
times,  but  for  present  purposes  it  is  suffi- 
cient to  go  back  forty  years,  to  the  time  when 
the  women  of  this  country  began  to  look 
Dress-  timidly  and  tentatively  (much  as  the  little 

fish  in  the  fable  looked  at  the  fly  on  the 
hook)  toward  the  mere  possibility  of  such 
changes  in  the  garments  they  wore  as  should 
conform  them,  in  some  degree  at  least,  to 
the  demands  of  beauty  or  health  or  conveni- 
ence or  adequate  bodily  protection.  A  few 
women,  looking  at  the  matter  quite  simply 
and  directly,  and  conceiving,  therefore,  that 
dress-reform  was  a  matter  solely  of  individ- 
ual and  private  concern,  shut  themselves 
into  the  privacy  of  their  homes,  snipped  and 
sheared  and  stitched  industriously,  coming 
forth  at  last  to  shock  the  gaze  of  a  waiting 
world  with  a  curious  hybrid  garment,  nei- 
ther male  nor  female,  lacking  the  stern  prac- 
ticability  of  the   masculine   garb,    lacking 

78 


Women  and  Reforms 


also  all  the  sweet  appeal  of  the  flowing 
feminine  line,  lacking  even  that  long  ''pet- 
ty-coat,"  without  which,  as  the  acute  Mr.    Pepys  and 

petticoats. 

Pepys  observes,  "  nobody  could  take  them 
for  women."  It  is  not  strange  that  the  re- 
form received  a  blow,  then  and  there,  from 
which  it  staggered  along  unsteadily,  upheld 
only  by  the  occasional  enthusiasm  of  a  busi- 
ness-like prophet,  or  a  Rainy  Day  Club,  or 
a  Woman's  Congress  (where  it  crept  in  with 
other  more  popular  and  less  necessary  re- 
forms), until  about  three  years  ago.  Then, 
without  any  seeming  movement,  without  de- 
claring itself  at  all,  suddenly,  like  light  at 
the  creative  fiat,  it  was.  And  it  came, 
not  through  any  tempest  of  organization  or 
any  whirlwind  of  enthusiasm,  but  through 
the  still,  small  wheels  of  the  bicycle,  bring- 
ing forth  the  one  thing  that  was  necessary 
and  had  been  lacking  all  the  time — rea- 
son enough.  What  a  regard  for  health  or 
beauty,  or  convenience,  or  individuality, 
or  comfort  had  never  accomplished,  the 
desire  for  pleasure  brought  at  once.  To- 
day the  short  skirt,  the  comfortable  blouse, 

79 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


the  well-protected  ankle,  make  up  a  costume 
as  respected  and  as  non-committal  on  the 
streets  of  a  great  city  as  on  the  golf-links  of 
the  most  remote  meadows.  Dress-reform 
need  go  no  farther  in  accomplishing  its 
own  ends,  though  it  is  certain  to  carry 
with  it  half  a  dozen  linked  reforms,  more 
or  less  desirable.  Given  reason  enough,  you 
ivhat  see — specific  and  immediate  need — and  any 

form  /0SS2-  rcform  is  inevitable,  but  in  the  absence  of 
sufficient  reason  it  is  as  impossible  to  ac- 
complish a  reform  as  it  is  physically  im- 
possible (to  use  one  of  Mr.  Mallock's  illus- 
trations) to  knock  a  man  down  unless  he 
gives  you  a  sufficient  motive  for  doing  so. 

There  is  no  doubting  that  reforms  are 
sometimes  necessary  ;  that  the  world  is  full 
of  affairs  which  are  not  righteous,  and  that 
many  of  them  should  be  set  straight ;  just  as 
there  is  a  restful  certainty  that  these  surely 
will  be  set  straight  in  their  own  ripe  time. 
But  even  so,  no  matter  how  desirable  may 
be  the  reform  or  how  great  the  power  of  the 
woman,  it  by  no  means  follows  that  she — or 

80 


Women  and  Reforms 


you  and  I — are  necessary  to  its  establishment. 
I  have  sometimes  wondered  whether  we 
women,  conscientiously  anxious  as  we  are 
not  to  play  the  shirk  in  all  questions  of  se- 
rious import,  have  not  come  to  overrate  the 
responsibility  of  the  individual  in  the  sim- 
ple possession  of  convictions  and  powers. 
For  it  is  not  always  inevitable,  even  in  the 
stern  deductions  of  the  moral  world,  that 
because  one  has  the  ability  to  do  fine  things, 
nothing  remains  but  to  be  constantly  about 
their  discharge.  To  be  always  living  "at  Living- " at 
the  top  of  ones  voice  does  away  both  one's  voice:' 
with  the  logic  and  the  distinction  of  the  per- 
formance. I  like  to  think  that  each  one 
of  us  has  a  right,  if  she  wishes  it,  to  a  sense 
of  unexpended  power  and  to  the  rich  self- 
content  that  comes  with  it,  just  for  their 
own  sweet  sake,  if  she  happens  to  prefer 
these  to  a  more  ostentatious  and  ambitious 
self-expression.  And  as  for  convictions, 
perhaps  an  advance  in  ethics  may  some  day 
lead  us  to  suspect  that  convictions  were 
meant  to  be  serviceable  mainly  as  springs  of 
action,  and  to  govern    us    in  our  relations 

8i 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


The  neces- 
sity/or 
elevating 
}>ioral 
deportment. 


with  others,  rather  than  for  promiscuous 
circulation  among  our  friends  —  who  may 
also  happen  to  have  convictions  of  their 
own.  Possibly,  too,  we  women  have  been 
over-advised  as  to  the  peculiar  responsibility 
for  morals  which  is  generally  supposed  to 
attend  upon  the  possession  of  petticoats. 
Whatever  the  Turveydrops  of  the  moral 
world  may  have  to  say  about  the  necessity 
for  edifying  moral  deportment  on  the  part 
of  "  wooman,  bewitching  wooman,"  I  have 
never  been  able  to  see  any  indubitable  in- 
tent in  nature  herself  toward  binding  them 
over  to  any  higher  moral  standards  than  she 
does  men.  Both  men  and  women  seem  to 
me  to  be  compounded  of  the  same  aver- 
age morality,  though  with  certain  unlike 
manifestations,  largely  the  result  of  circum- 
stances and  opportunities.  I  see  no  spe- 
cial cause  for  believing  that  the  average 
woman  under  like  temptation  would  do  very 
differently  from  the  average  man — a  belief 
which  is  not  lessened  by  Bishop  Potter's  re- 
cent accusation  before  the  Women's  Auxil- 
iary of  the  Civil  Service  Reform  Associa- 

82 


Women  and  Reforms 


tion  that  they  put  their  relatives  into  office 
whenever  they  got  the  chance,  "without 
any  evidence  that  they  are  fitted  to  fill  the  Bishop 

r        11         T^         ■^^  Potter's  a 

places  they  applied  for.  Possibly  women  cusation. 
were  intended  by  their  Creator  to  stand  for 
the  reformatory  interests  of  life,  but  I  think 
there  is  not,  as  yet,  sufficient  evidence 
thereto  either  in  the  nature  of  things  or  of 
women  to  warrant  any  special  abrogation  of 
certain  distinct  and  more  familiar  duties,  in 
favor  of  interests  mainly  moral. 

And  even  if  we  had,  as  a  sex,  displayed 
that  special  aptitude  for  managing  public 
affairs  which  has  distinguished  a  few  of  us, 
the  greater  part  of  us  are,  as  the  division 
of  labor  adjusts  things  at  present,  either  too 
busy  or  too  tired  to  undertake  them.  It 
must  be  quite  clear  to  those  who  are  watch- 
ing the  trend  of  modern  life  with  any  inter- 
est as  to  its  results,  that  we  women  are  taxing 
ourselves  to  the  point  of  physical  distress 
and  mental  superficiality.  We  are  carrying 
the  heavy  end  of  creation,  and  instead  of 
deprecating  it,  as  we  should,  we  seem  to  de- 

83 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


sire  to  impress  ourselves  and  the  world  at 
large  with  the  great  virtue  that  consists  in 
getting  tired.  I  wish,  instead,  we  might  arise 
to  such  an  appreciation  of  our  physical  worth 
and  dignity  as  would  make  us  as  much 
ashamed  of  exhaustion  (except  under  abso- 
lute necessity)  as  we  should  be  of  any  other 
equally  grave  physical  immorality.  And  as 
for  the  extreme  busy-ness  in  which  we  rather 
glory  to-day,  what  is  to  be  said  of  it  except 
that  it  is  no  more  worthy  of  respect  than 
any  other  departure  from  nature,  and  that  it 
argues  not  so  much  for  general  ability  as  for 
the  specific  inabihty  to  exercise  a  wise  and 
The  virtue    propcr  sclcction  in  the  affairs  of  life  ?     In 

oy  selection.  .  .      .      ,. 

some  degree,  also,  it  indicates  a  lessened 
sense  of  personal  dignity,  in  that  we  permit 
ourselves  to  be  whipped  like  slaves  through 
each  day  with  the  scourge  of  many  duties. 

I  suppose  the  end  of  reform  is  the  better- 
ment of  the  world  at  large,  and  with  that  in 
view  it  has  always  been  surprising  to  me  that 
so  little  attention  has  been  given  to  the  part 
played  in  this  general  betterment  of  creation 
by  mere  happiness.     I  believe  it  is  Mr.  Ste- 

84 


Women  and  Reforms 


venson  who  says  that  the  duty  of  being  hap- 
py is  the  most  underrated  duty  in  the  world. 
And  in  spite  of  all  we  may  wish  or  assert  to 
the  contrary,  there  is  indubitable  evidence 
that  our  present  hold,  at  least,  on  happiness 
has  much  to  do  with  physical  well-being.  I 
suppose  one  of  the  reasons  why  the  reform- 
ers of  the  world  have  not  been  notably  de- 
lightful persons  to  live  with,  is  because  they 
were  either  too  busy  or  too  tired  to  be  hap- 
py. And  yet  a  happy  man,  and  especially 
a  happy  woman,  is  a  radiating  focus  of  re- 
form, for  such  a  person  possesses  that  gentle 
and  diffused  persuasiveness  which  leads  us 
into  wilHng  good  endeavor,  simply  because 
it  displays  to  us  the  good  taste  of  enjoying 
fine  behavior. 

But  however  true  this  may  be,  there  will 
still  be  some  women  among  us  whose  taste  is  a  taste m 
for  the  purple  of  heroic  action  \  who  would 
rather  give  themselves  to  public  benefaction 
than  to  private  happiness,  as  also  there  will 
be  some  whose  splendid  abilities  will  give 
them  to  command  both.     For  these  there 

85 


heroism. 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


may  be  a  not  unfriendly  suggestion  in  occa- 
sionally recalling  the  remark  of  the  sage  Mr. 
Birrell,  that  there  is  "  a  great  deal  of  rela- 
tivity about  a  dress-suit,"  so  that  to  wear 
any  part  of  it  without  the  rest  is  "provoca- 
tive only  of  Homeric  laughter. ' '  There  is 
also  a  great  deal  of  relativity  about  reform, 
and  it  is  the  failure  upon  the  part  of  many 
reformers  to  understand  this  which  makes 
the  pathos  and  the  humor  and  the  satire  of 
so  many  reforming  movements,  in  them- 
selves noble  and  uplifting. 

The  social  structure  being  not  a  thing  of 
mechanical  parts,  but  a  living  growth,  it  is 
impossible  even  to  lop  off  an  excrescence 
without  drawing  blood  from  the  whole  body. 
Tke  penal-  It  is  with  rcforms  as  with  everything  else 
^rtforms.  in  the  world  that  is  an  evolution  and  not 
a  manufacture  —  you  cannot  get  one  end, 
which  you  may  want,  without  getting  the 
other  end,  which  you  probably  will  not  find 
so  desirable.  It  was,  as  Mr.  Lowell  says, 
the  inability  of  Don  Quixote  to  discover  for 
himself  what  the  Nature  of  Things  really  was, 
or  of  accommodating  himself  to  it  if  he  had 

86 


Women  and  Reforms 


discovered  it,  which  makes  the  work  of 
Cervantes  an  immortal  commentary  on  "all 
attempts  to  re-make  the  world  by  the  means 
and  methods  of  the  past  and  on  the  human- 
ity of  impulse  which  looks  on  each  fact  that 
arouses  its  pity  or  its  sense  of  wrong  as  if  it 
was  or  could  be  complete  in  itself,  and  were 
not  indissolubly  bound  up  with  myriads  of 
other  facts  both  in  the  past  and  the  present. 

Don  Quixote's  quarrel  is  with  the  DonQuix- 
structure  of  society,  and  it  is  only  by  degrees,  rei. 
through  much  mistake  and  consequent  suffer- 
ing, that  he  finds  out  how  strong  that  struct- 
ure is,  nay,  how  strong  it  must  be,  in  order 
that  the  world  may  go  smoothly  and  the 
course  of  events  not  be  broken  by  a  series  of 
cataclysms.  .  .  .  'Do  right  though 
the  heavens  fall,'  is  an  admirable  precept  so 
long  as  the  heavens  don't  take  you  at  your 
word  and  come  down  about  your  ears — still 
worse,  about  those  of  your  neighbors.  It  is 
a  rule  rather  of  private  than  public  applica- 
tion, for,  indeed,  it  is  the  doing  of  right  that 
keeps  the  heavens  from  falling." 


87 


THE     EVOLUTION     OF 
"WOMAN" 


THE     EVOLUTION     OF 
-WOMAN" 


WHEN  God  made  man  and  pronounced 
His  work  good,  woman  had  also 
been  created,  and  was  probably  therefore  in- 
cluded in  the  Divine  approbation.  It  is 
well  occasionally  to  recall  this  fact,  since,  to 
any  thoughtful  observer  of  woman  to-day, 
this  half-and-more  of  humanity  which  is  not 
man  seems  smitten  as  with  an  uneasy  sense  of 
having,  with  considerable  ostentation,  to  ac-    Thejustiji- 

^        .        ,  -  .         .  -      .  .  J  ,        cation  of 

count  for  itself,  to  justify  its  creation,  and  to  woman. 
work  out  its  own  salvation,  though  without 
any  indication  of  that  fear  and  trembling 
which  the  Apostle  deemed  fitting  in  the  case 
of  the  elect.  If,  in  the  beginning,  woman 
ever  shared  with  man  that  wholesome  reluc- 
tance to  work  which  he  is  still  natural  enough 

91 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


to  manifest  at  times,  it  is  fairly  to  be  deduced 
that  she  has  got  well  over  it ;  if  she  ever  pos- 
sessed that  gift  of  the  gods — the  gracious  art 
of  idling — it  lies  now  quite  beyond  the  reach 
An  early      of  her  hand.     It  would  seem  that  she  has 

definition  ,  ,      .  , 

o/work,  forgotten  that  work  was  once  designated  a 
curse  and  designed  as  a  punishment.  For, 
such  is  the  feminine  appetite  for  being  busy 
to-day  that,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  women 
have  always  done  more  than  half  of  the  work 
of  the  world  without  getting  special  credit 
for  it,  they  are  now  reaching  out  eager  hands 
for  that  share  of  the  world's  curse  which  has 
hitherto  fallen  on  the  shoulders  of  men 
alone.  They  are  in  the  professions,  in  com- 
merce, in  trade,  in  politics,  in  finance,  and 
in  men's  attire.  They  own  ships  and  run 
them,  they  raise  live  stock  on  Western  farms 
and  make  fortunes,  they  speculate  in  stocks 
and  lose  fortunes,  they  manage  vast  philan- 
thropies. They  are  bakers,  butchers,  bar- 
bers, artists,  poets,  sculptors,  and  lady  man- 
agers. There  is  probably  no  reason  why 
they  may  yet  not  be  tailors  and  telegraph 
linemen — the  two  trades  which  a  thoughtful 


92 


The  Evolution  of  "  Woman" 

man  has  recently  noted  as  the  only  ones  in 
which  women  are  not  at  present  busily  em- 
ployed. It  is  therefore  not  marvellous  that 
women  should  be  engaged  to-day  (to  quote 
the  language  of  one  of  the  most  brilliant  lady 
discoverers)  in  "  celebrating  as  more  im- 
portant than  the  discovery  of  Columbus  the 
fact  that  the  General  Government  has  just 
discovered  woman."  One  must  allow  some- 
thing certainly  to  the  rapture  of  a  sex  that  Thcdis- 
has  just  been  discovered.  But  the  factisthat^  sex. 
in  all  ages,  and  in  all  stages  ofcivilization. 
women  have  always  done  halt  the  work  of 
the  world  and  carried  half  its  responsibili- 
ties. Their  present  wonderful  activity,  which 
a  believer  has  called  "  lifting  the  sex  out  of 
mere  sex-hood  into  womanhood,"  has  nothing 
either  new  or  wonderful  about  it — except  her 
way  of  phrasing  it.  The  one  point  of  dif- 
ference is  that  while  women  were  once  con- 
tent to  do  their  work  unostentatiously  and 
without  asking  special  recognition  for  it,  to- 
day they  manifest  a  disposition  toward  the 
title  roles,  and  the  calcium  light,  and  the 
centre  of  the  stage. 

93 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


Difficult  as  it  may  be  for  us  of  to-day  to  re- 
alize it,  the  actual  truth  is  that  each  century 
of  the  world's  history  has  had  its  full  share 
of  women  as  gifted,  as  dignified,  and  as  im- 
portantly if  not  as  publicly  engaged  as  the 
women  of  to-day.  Whenever  there  has  been 
a  special  gift,  it  has  made  itself  manifest  with- 
out asking  whether  a  man  or  a  woman  were  its 
exponent.  There  have  always  been  painters^ 
and  poets,  and  pliilosophers,  and  law-givpry^j 
and  prophets,  among  women;  there  were 
scholars,  there  were  even  physicians — for 
women  were  the  first  physicians,  and  their 
presence  in  the  profession  to-day  is  aresto^ 
Remark-  jj Oil  rather  ttianan  innovation.  Miriam  the 
ofthe"past.  Hebrew,  Sappho  and  Astasia,  Elizabeth  and 
Mary  and  Lady  Jane  Grey  in  England,  and 
Victoria  Colonna  in  Italy,  and  Catharine  de' 
Medici  in  France,  are  hardly  to  be  con- 
sidered as  objects  of  patronizing  comment 
from  the  women  of  to-day,  while  LaviniaFon- 
tana,  painter  in  ordinary  to  Gregory  XIII., 
and  Gentileschi,  whose  portraits  of  the  Court 
of  Charles  I,  were  remarkable,  were  possibly 
as  famous  as  any  women  painters  of  the  Dres- 

94 


The  EvoluHon  of  "Woman 


ent  time.  So,  too,  Serani,  and  Propertia  de 
Rossi,  and  Sister  Plautilla,  and  Rachel  Van 
Pool,  in  their  own  day  received  as  distin- 
guished honors  as  will  probably  fall  to  most 
women  in  what  is  now  gallantly  termed  the 
"  woman's  century." 

One  might  go  on  with  the  list  indefinitely, 
if  it  were  necessary  to  do  so  by  way  of  estab- 
lishing the  truth  that,  as  there  have  always 
been  exceptional  men  in  the  world,  so  there 
have  always  been  exceptional  women  to  match 
them,  and  that  between  these  there  has  al- 
ways been  an  equality  of  power  and  privi- 
lege. So,  too,  one  might  go  on  indefinitely 
to  show  that  between  the  unexceptional 
classes,  between  the  commonplace,  ungifted 
man  and  the  routine-loving,  ordinary  woman 
there  was,  for  more  centuries  than  one  might 
guess,  even  during  the  feudal  period  in  which 
the   legal   equities   of    women    were    most  Equality 

J  between 

abridged,  a  community  of  niterests  and  con-   wen  and 
tent  which  left  no  room  for  that  unhappy 
sex-consciousness   which    has    wrought    too 
much  mischief  since.     I  am  far  from  assert- 
ing  that   the   relations   between   men    and 

95 


•women. 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


women  in  these  times  were  those  of  ideal 
justice,  or  even  of  justice  at  all.  But  they 
belonged  definitely  to  their  times.  They 
were  ' '  the  result  of  both  natural  and  sexual 
selection,  working  upon  the  pagan  ideal,"  in 
which  every  woman  was  supposed  to  be  un- 
der the  protection  of  some  man,  and  thus  to 
be  subordinated  to  him  and  represented  by 
him  ;  but  with  this  there  was  between  the 
sexes  neither  rivalry  in  practical  matters  nor 
an  abnormal  sex-consciousness  in  intellectual 
affairs.  The  women  were  as  shrewd,  as  busy, 
as  contented,  and  as  unconscious  of  them- 
selves as  the  men.  While  there  were  un- 
doubted sex  distinctions  in  work,  as  there 
must  always  have  been,  these  were  such  as 
had  established  themselves  upon  perfectly  ob- 
vious and  healthy  lines,  since  neither  sex  had 
discovered  the  inferiority  of  woman's  mind  as 
now  scientifically  deduced  from  the  weight  of 
her  brain,  the  construction  of  her  shoulder- 
blades,  and  the  fact  that  she  buttons  her  gar- 
ments "centripetally,"  while  a  man  buttons 
his ' '  centrifugally  " — whatever  that  may  mean. 
These  important  deductions  came  later. 

96 


The  Evolution  of  "Woman" 


sciousness 
and  the 
Puritans. 


I  have  always  believed  that  the  Puritan  in- 
fluence had  much  to  do  with  developing  the 
sex-consciousness    in  woman,  first,  because  Sex^on- 
one  sees  it  for  the  first  time  sharply  mani-  a'n7the 
fest,  both  in  men  and  women,  in  that  period 
of  literary   activity    immediately  following 
the  establishment  of  the  Puritan  influence  in 
England;    second,  because  it  is  impossible 
that  so  great  a  moral  change  as  was  wrought 
by  Puritanism  could  take  place  among  any 
people   without    aff'ecting   greatly  both  the 
character   and  the  position  of  the  women. 
John  Wallington,  '<  turner  in  East-cheap," 
but  no  less  a  Puritan  gentleman,  leaves  us  a 
portrait  of  his  mother  as  that  of  the  model 
London  housewife.     He  says  : 

"  She  was  very  loving  and  obedient  to  her 
parents,  loving  and  kind  to  her  husband. 
Very  tender-hearted  to  her  children,  loving 
all  that  were  godly,  much  disHking  the 
wicked  and  profane.  She  was  a  pattern  of 
sobriety  unto  many  ;  very  seldom  was  seen 
abroad  except  at  church;  when  others  recre- 
ated themselves  at  holidays  and  other  times, 
she  would  take   her  needle-work  and  say, 

97 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


*  Here  is  my  recreation.'     .     .     .     God  had 

given  her  a  pregnant  wit  and  an  excellent 

memory.     She  was  very  right  and  perfect  in 

all  stories  of  the  Bible,  likewise  in  all  the 

A  model       stories  of  the  martyrs,  and  could  readily  turn 

woman.         to  them  ;  she  was  also  perfect  and  well-seen 

in  the  English  Chronicles,  and  in  the  descent 

A  of  the  Kings  of  England.     She  lived  in  holy 

\         wedlock   with   her   husband   twenty  years, 

■■^       wanting  but  four  days." 

Here  is  the  Puritan's  ideal  woman — the 
woman  of  the  type  that  made  the  mothers 
of  this  country — dutiful,  chaste,  pious,  prac- 
tical, sober-minded,  narrow,  knowing  her 
Bible  and  her  English  History,  keeping  with- 
in her  walls  except  when  she  went  to  church, 
neglecting  no  duty  in  life,  not  even  that  of 
hating  the  wicked  as  much  as  she  loved  the 
righteous. 

At  the  same  time,  there  was  an  influence 
second  only  to  that  of  Puritanism  in  develop- 
ing this  sex-consciousness  among  women — 
the  presence  of  the  exact  opposite  to  the 
Puritan  woman — the  woman  of  the  Stuart 
court,  the  product,  as  were  the  men  about 

98 


Court. 


The  Evolution  of  "Woman" 

her,  of  an   impassioned  revolt   against   the 
unnatural   severity  of  the  Puritans,  among 
tTiose  whose  blood  still  beat  out  the  rhythm 
of  Shakespeare's  time.     She  was  clever  and    The -woman 
full  of  affairs,  she  made  or  lost  the  fortunes  °stuJrt 
of  public  men  as  she  chose,  she  was  well- 
informed  in  public  matters,  and  was  as  gay 
and  witty  and  licentious  as  the  Puritan  wom- 
an was  chaste  and  decorous.     It  is  incon- 
ceivable that,  with  the  opportunity  so  close 
to  him,  and  with  the  human  nature  not  all 
out   of  him,  the  male  Puritan   should   not 
have  regarded  her  as  the  "  awful  example  " 
to  which  he    pointed    when  he   wished   to 
inculcate  among  the  females  of  his  house  a 
proper  appreciation  of  the  humble  and  mod- 
est virtues  which  adorn  her  sex.     That  this 
would  help  to  intensify  the  sex-conscious- 
ness already  existing  among  the  women  of 
the  time  is  indisputable,  for  this  particular 
manifestation  lay  along  the  line  of  morals ; 
and  nowhere  in  all  the  kingdoms  of  thought 
has  sex-consciousness  been  from  the  first  so 
insistently,  inconsistently,  mischievously  op- 
erative as  in  the  domain  of  morals. 

99 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


Allowing,  however,  for  a  difference  in 
judgment  in  assigning  the  cause,  it  is  a  fact 
The  post-  that  the  whole  moral  and  intellectual  atmos- 
period!*  phere  of  the  period  following  the  Puritan 
influence  was  full  of  this  subtle  miasma. 
With  an  eager  craving  for  learning,  the 
brilliant  women  of  that  time  exhibited  a 
diffidence  in  acknowledging  it  almost  as  rep- 
rehensible as  the  masculine  prejudice  against 
gratifying  it.  Mary  Fairfax,  reasoning  that 
it  was  unjust  that  women  should  have  been 
given  a  desire  for  knowledge  if  it  were 
wrong  to  acquire  it,  was,  nevertheless,  obliged 
to  teach  herself  Euclid  and  Greek  by  stealth, 
and  to  depend  upon  her  memory  of  Euclid 
for  original  work  at  night,  since  candles 
were  wholly  denied  her.  Mrs.  Radcliffe 
naively  confesses,  in  one  of  her  prefaces,  that 
she  was  always  compelled,  when  writing,  to 
restrain  her  sense  of  humor  to  a  degree  con- 
sistent with  feminine  propriety.  Dr.  John- 
son, at  his  own  suggestion,  taught  Fanny 
Burney  Latin,  but  was  not  willing  to  face 
the  public  opprobrium  sure  to  follow  such  a 
heresy,  and  therefore  enjoined   her  to    say 

lOO 


The  Evolution  of  "Woman" 

nothing  about  it — a  caution  she  was  quite 
disposed  to  heec,  >:hink^.r.g,  says  ]Mr.  Seeley, 
"  it  was  an  injury  tc  be  considered  a  learned 
person."     Hannah  Morn's  fatlier,  a, man  of  The 
robust  common-sense    and    much  learning,   o/some 

/amous 

but,  nevertheless,  so  her  biographer  tells  us,  -women. 
"  remarked  for  his  strong  dislike  of  female 
pedantry,"  undertook,  at  his  wife's  request, 
to  teach  little  Hannah  Latin  and  mathe- 
matics. After  a  short  time  he  became 
frightened  at  his  own  success  and  dropped 
the  mathematics,  keeping  on  with  the  Latin 
only  at  the  passionate  importunity  of  both 
mother  and  child.  That  famous  Doctor — 
and  donkey — Dr.  Gregory,  in  his  ''Legacy 
To  My  Daughters,"  accepted  as  a  standard 
work  on  female  propriety  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  commended  to  girls  who  were  so 
unfortunate  as  to  be  robust  by  nature  such 
constant  simulation  of  sickly  delicacy  as  was 
considered  necessary  to  keep  up  the  proper 
feminine  charm.  It  was  he  who  cautioned 
all  women  carefully  to  hide  such  good  sense 
and  knowledge  as  they  might  possess — the 
first  being  an  undesirable  attribute,  as  assum- 

lOI 


Tlje  Unquiet  Sex 


ing  a  superiority  over   the  rest  of  the  com- 
pany j- -the  second    as  .equally   undesirable, 
"  becaiase  men -generally  look  with  a  jealous 
and-  mailigaiaut  eye  on  a  w.omar,  of  great  parts 
and   a   cultivated   understanding."     Before 
the  deed,  both  the  right  and  the  ability  to  do 
anything  worth  doing  was  denied  to  women, 
and  after  the  deed,  such  inordinate  praise  was 
bestowed   upon    them  as  clearly    indicated 
Standards     the  subvcrsion  of  all  real  standards  of  criti- 
"tiorkea/thy.   cism  to  the   fact  of  sex   alone.     Nowhere 
was  there  the  atmosphere  of  healthy  uncon- 
sciousness in  which  alone  the  best  work  of 
either  sex  is  possible.     No  wonder  that  the 
robust  mind  of  Mary  Wollstonecraft  turned 
away  from  all  this  unreality  with  what  she 
called    "a    sickly    qualm."       No    wonder 
that,  in  her  lawyer-like  "  Vindication,"  a 
little   later,    all   the    force    of  her   intellect 
was  put  into  one  proposition — women  were 
created  to  be  human  beings  first  and  women 
second — a  proposition  which,  like  most  gen- 
eralizations,  carries  with   it   an    over-state- 
ment which   it   is  easier  to  make  than  to 
qualify. 

I02 


The  Evolution  of  "Woman" 

Meantime  the  same  state  of  affairs  was 
establishing  itself  in  our  own  country.  The 
women  of  the  Colonies,  both  north  and  south,    The 

women 

were  by  no  means  a  set  of  incapables.  1  hese  o/t/u 

A»ierzca>. 

had  brought  with  them  the  accomplishments  Colonies. 
of  the  women  of  Shakespeare's  time,  and  the 
intellectual  restlessness  of  the  periods  follow- 
ing. They  not  only  spun,  and  wove,  and 
cured  the  meat,  and  made  the  clothing  for 
the  family,  shoes  and  hats  included,  but 
they  discussed  theology  and  state-craft  with 
the  men,  they  kept  the  dame  schools  and  the 
family  records,  and  if  the  spelling  and  pen- 
manship of  these  last  impress  one  to-day 
with  an  air  of  untrammelled  originality,  in 
those  days,  at  least,  they  conformed  entirely 
to  the  best  masculine  standard.  As  soon  as 
there  was  a  literary  market  in  America,  the 
women  rushed  into  it  as  fast  as  the  men  did. 
Hawthorne,  Poe,  Drake,  Cooper,  and  Hal- 
leck  are  offset  by  Emma  Embury,  Mrs.  Whit- 
man, Hannah  Gould,  Mrs.  Child,  and  Mar- 
garet Fuller.  The  fact  that  the  women  of 
that  time  were  shut  out  of  the  high  schools 
has  been  much  more  emphasized   than  the 

103 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


fact  that  without  any  intellectual  training, 
and  with  only  such  opportunities  as  they 
could  make  for  themselves,  their  work  is 
quite  worthy  to  be  compared  with  the  best 
of  men.  The  truth  is,  the  value  of  mere 
education  is,  and  always  has  been,  enor- 
mously overrated  in  comparison  with  the 
value  of  that  original  endowment  of  brains 
and  character  which  is  a  gift  of  birth,  and 
quite  as  often  a  gift  to  women  as  to  men. 
The  American  women  of  the  earlier  times 
were  as  truly  the  intellectual  peers  of  the 
men  of  those  times  as  the  average  American 
woman  to-day  is  the  superior  in  education 
and  culture  of  the  average  man. 

I  am  far  from   thinking  that  the  position 

of  the  American  women  at  that  time  was 

ideal,  or  that   there  was  not  room  for  such 

The  warring  protest  against  her  legal  disabilities 

re»i07>al 

of  legal        as  was  made  by  certain  just  men  and  brave 

disabilities. 

women.  But  all  these  mjustices  were  not  so 
much  oppressions  as  survivals — survi_yals_,of 
a  condition  of  society  in  which  woman  was 
ceffalnly  subordinated  to  man.  Still,  since 
this  subordination  was  rooted  in  the  greater 

104 


The  Evolution  of  "Woman" 


strength  of  man,  and  was,  no  doubt,  the  wisest 
and  safest  provision  in  a  moving  civilization, 
it  hardly  seems  worth  our  while  to  arouse 
sex-antagonism  by  hunting  for  discreditable 
motives  in  the  riiatter,  when  those  at  hand 
are  both  creditable  and  sufficient. 

Great,  indeed,  was  the  accomplishment  of 
these  men  and  women  in  removing  many  of 
the  legal  disabilities  of  women,  and  thus 
breaking  the  entail  that  had  given  the  world 
to  man;  but  other  influences  have  been 
stronger.  So  inevitable  was  the  change  in  The  change 
the  position  of  women  from  the  hour  of  the  o/ women 

^  ivas  inevi- 

invention  of  the  power-loom  and  the  steam-  tabu. 
engine,  that  they  would  have  arrived  at  their 
present  place  of  opportunity — though  not  so 
speedily,  perhaps — if  these  earnest  reformers 
had  never  spoken  a  word  of  protest  and  en- 
treaty. The  typewriter  alone  has  done  more 
for  women  than  the  ballot  ever  will,  and  the 
mower-and-reaper,  by  reducing  to  one-tenth 
the  number  of  men  employed  on  the  farms, 
has  lightened  their  labor  as  no  legislation 
could  lighten  it.  The  enormous  increase  of 
wealth,  and  the  leisure  which  wealth  buys, 

105 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


What  the 
Civil  I  Far 
did  /or 
women. 


the  multiplication  of  periodical  literature, 
and  the  easy  access  to  good  books,  the 
founding  of  colleges  for  girls  and  of  hundreds 
—  nay,  thousands  —  of  women's  clubs  and 
Chautauqua  circles,  the  marvellous  political 
concessions  made  by  men  in  the  last  twenty 
years,  all  these  have  been  wonderful  factors 
in  putting  power  into  the  heads  and  hands 
of  women.  And,  too,  there  was  the  Civil 
War.  In  this,  the  ethical  and  humanitarian 
question  involved  was  such  as  to  appeal  di- 
rectly to  women.  Almost  before  they  knew 
it  they  found  themselves  thinking  and  speak- 
ing and  writing  on  public  questions.  The 
remarkable  success  of  the  Sanitary  Commis- 
sion— which  embraced  ten  or  twelve  thou- 
sand bands  of  inexperienced  women,  all  over 
the  country,  in  a  gigantic  business  and  phil- 
anthropic enterprise  involving  millions  of 
dollars,  at  a  time  when  the  credit  of  the 
country  was  most  unstable,  and  when  not 
even  the  shrewdest  statesmen  could  predict 
the  turn  of  to-morrow — taught  the  women 
of  the  country  what  they  could  do  in  a  bus- 
iness and  executive  way.     The  work  of  the 

io6 


The  Evolution  of  "Woman" 


women-nurses  and  women-physicians  in  the 
hospitals  gave  them  the  first  knowledge  of 
their  power  in  philanthropy.  It  is  not  fanciful 
to  adduce  as  still  another  factor  in  hastening 
the  independence  of  women,  the  loss  of  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  men  in  the  war.  Every 
death  meant  the  loss  of  a  protector  to  at 
least  one  v,-oman,  usually  to  more.  If  there 
were  children  dependent  upon  her,  this  often 
meant  to  the  mother  a  necessary  entrance 
into  the  world,  to  do  whatever  work  was 
most  instantly  available ;  while  the  death  of 
every  one  of  the  gallant  young  fellows  who 
kissed  their  sweethearts'  lips  and  went  out  to 
die  on  the  battle-field,  robbed  one  woman's 
life  of  the  absorbing  interests  of  love,  which 
gone,  she  turned,  as  women  do,  ''  when  love 
is  done,"  to  the  intellectual  and  philan- 
thropic life  for  what  consolation  it  could 
give. 


Through  such  complex  influences,  and  many  a  ■woman's 

.  -world  is  as 

others,  has  it  come  about  that  to-day,  m  this  tuide  as  a 


country,   a  woman's  work  is  as  wide  as  a 
man's.  Whether  we  are  personally  convinced, 

107 


tnan  s. 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


or  not,  of  the  economic  value  and  of  the  so- 
cial propriety  of  her  participation  in  all  the 
work  of  the  world,  we  must  admit  that  there 
seems  to  be  nothing  a  woman  may  wish  to 
do  that  she  has  not  the  fairest  chance  at  trying. 
Best  of  all,  she  may,  if  she  chooses,  do  her 
work — as  competent  and  even  as  remarkable 
work  as  she  is  able  to  make  it — without  at- 
tracting special  notice  because  of  her  sex. 
And  she  may  take  the  rewards  of  this  work, 
if  she  will,  in  just  the  healthy,  unconscious, 
matter-of-fact  way  in  which  men  assume  that 
the  world  belongs  to  those  who  can  take  it, 
and  proceed  to  take  it,  making  no  more  ado 
about  the  matter.  But,  strange  to  say,  this 
is  precisely  what  the  woman  of  to-day  does 
not  wish  to  do.  The  ' '  stern  realities  of 
life" — that  phrase  so  serviceable  to  men  in 
talking  to  undergraduates  and  women — have 
not  taken  the  sex-nonsense  out  of  her  head. 
She  is  the  victim  of  a  sex-consciousness  as 
acute  and  distressing  as  that  of  Fanny  Burney's 
time,  although  she  wears  it  as  the  queen  wore 
her rjie,  "with adifference."  WhereasFanny 
Burney  and  her  friends  dissembled,  with  the 

io8 


The  Evolution  of  "Woman 


most  shocking  modesty,  their  intellectual  gifts 
and  graces,  the  clever  woman  of  to-day  is 
moved  to  make  some  special  ostentation  of 
them,  as  if  their  possession  were  a  matter  of 
dispute  or  surprise.  She  makes  much  of  the  Modem 
present  activity  among  women,  but  the  tact  scious«ess. 
which  she  emphasizes  is  not  the  quality  of  the 
work,  which  is  the  only  thing  worth  com- 
ment, but  the  difficulties  overcome  in  doing 
the  work,  and  the  fact  that  the  worker  wears 
skirts  instead  of  trousers,  which  considerations 
have  no  bearing  whatever  on  the  case.  Fol- 
lowing the  goading  of  this  latter-day  sex- 
consciousness,  she  and  her  kind  have  accom- 
plished the  differentiation  and  classification 
of  that  species  known  as  Woman — with  the 
solemnity  of  the  capital  letter.  Woman 
may  be  defined  as  women  raised  to  the  «"" 
power.  She  is  a  species  of  high,  and  heroic, 
and  "  emancipated"  womankind,  as  service- 
able to  the  sex  for  the  purposes  of  rhetorical 
and  impassioned  address  as  that  gentle  and 
vapid  species,  "  the  fair  sex,"  is  to  men  for 
after-dinner  gallantry.  She  is  wise  with  the 
wisdom  of  clubs  and  conventions,  and  strong 

109 


T})e  Unquiet  Sex 


The  ez'ohi- 
Hon  of 
"■  Woman: 


Some 
aspects  o/ 
*'  Woman." 


in  her  inheritance  of  instincts.  There  is  noth- 
ing of  which  she  is  not  sure,  except  that  man 
was  designed  by  nature  to  be  her  helper ;  and 
there  is  nothing  which  she  will  not  do  for 
the  good  of  her  own  species,  except  do  noth- 
ing. She  believes  devoutly  in  a  Hereafter 
for  her  kind,  compared  with  which  the  oppor- 
tunities of  the  Here-now  are  as  shadows  in 
the  night.  And  about  all  these  things  she 
has  altogether  too  much  to  say.  The  wide- 
awake editor  insistently  presents  considera- 
tions of  public  affairs  from  "  The  Woman's 
Page  "  and  "  Her  Point  of  View,"  as  if  the 
structure  of  the  feminine  brain  were  such  as 
to  necessitate  a  woman's  looking  at  things 
in  an  inverted  and  peculiar  way,  as  Timothy 
Tittlebat  saw  the  landscape,  looking  through 
his  legs. 

In  recent  issues  of  Poole's  "  Index  "  I  find 
whole  pages  devoted  to  Her  consideration. 
She  is  discussed  as  a  Smuggler  and  as  a  School 
Director,  as  a  Detective  and  as  a  Drunkard, 
as  a  Public  Servant  and  as  a  Guardian  Angel, 
as  a  Tactician  and  as  a  Merchant,  as  a  Man- 
nish Maiden  and  as  a  Sceptic.     Somebody 


no 


T})e  Evolution  of  "Woman 


finds  things  to  say  about  ' '  Women  as  Wom- 
en," somebody  else  retorts  with  "Women 
as  They  Are  Supposed  to  Be,"  and  still 
another  gives  the  tail  of  the  argument  a  last 
and,  presumably,  authoritative  twist  in  the 
discussion  of  ' '  Women  as  They  Are. ' ' 

Nor,  when  ink  fails  her,  does  interest  flag. 
She  goes  into  councils  and  congresses  for 
the  purposes  of  self-celebration,  and,  an- 
nouncing as  her  motto  "  Not  Women,  but 
Woman,"  restricts  her  study  of  the  world's 
interests  to  such  aspects  as  are  either  direct- 
ly affecting  women,  or  directly  affected  by 
them.  Into  the  ' '  Woman  ' '  side  of  all  these 
subjects  she  burrows,  with  beautiful  uncon- 
sciousness that  by  so  doing  she  is  defeating 
the  very  purpose  for  which  these  women's 
gatherings  are  called,  namely,  "  the  ameli- 
oration of  the  condition  of  women." 

Whatever  amelioration   the   condition  of  ''The 

ameliora- 

women  may  need  to-day,  it  is  not  to  be  ac-   Uon  o/tiu 

condition  of 

complished  by  going  into  rhetorical  or  ex-   -women." 
ecutive   session   about   it.     The    individual 
wrongs   from  which  individual  women    are 
suffering  are  not,  alas  !    to    be   righted  by 

III 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


papers  in  congresses,  and  the  sex-wrongs 
from  which  all  women  are  supposed  to  be  suf- 
fering are  only  aggravated  by  being  made  the 
subject  of  excessive  consideration.  Take,  for 
example,  the  one  wrong  of  which  women 
complain  with  most  sharpness  and  most  jus- 
tice— unequal  payment  for  equal  work.  Any- 
thing that  helps  to  emphasize  the  fact  that 
women  are  new-comers  in  any  field  of  work 
tends  directly  to  lower  the  wages  of  that  work; 
anything  that  helps  to  arouse  the  prejudices 
of  men,  and  so  keeps  up  unfair  discrimina- 
tion against  women-workers,  tends  directly 
to  depress  wages ;  anything  that  serves  to 
obtrude  the  fact  that  women  are  not  equal 
to  men  in  units  of  horse-power  is  sure  to 
Nature's       lowcr  wages.     The  fact  is  that,  since  nature 

argument        i  i  r  i  i       i  rr         > 

in  the  mat-  hersclf  has  had  some  arguments  to  offer  m 
the  matter,  women-workers  are  at  a  consid- 
erable physical  disadvantage  in  comparison 
with  men,  and  the  less  they  say  about  it  the 
better. 

So  it  is  with  other  favorite  themes  of  dis- 
cussion among  women.  The  less  said,  for 
example,  in  declaration  of  women's  rights 

112 


TJoe  Evolution  of  "  Woman  " 

and  in  glorification  of  her  acliievements  the 
better  for  both  rights  and  achievements  :   for 
to  declare  a  right  implies  a  question  of  it, 
and  ostentatiously  to  parade  ability  is  not 
to  dignify  it.     The  strongest  assertion  of  a 
right  is  the  assumption  of  it,  and  the  only 
proof  of  equality  of  work  is  equality  of  work. 
Now,  all  these  and  many  other  things  like 
them  are  the  stuff  of  which  women's  congres- 
sional   discussions   are  made,   and    they  all 
serve  charmingly  to  keep  alive  that  intangible 
something  called  the  "Woman  Question,"  of  is  there  a 
which   men    are  already  very  tired,  and  of  Question)' 
which  women  ought  to  be.     For  men  have 
risen,  with  the  wonderful  multiplication  with- 
in the  last  few  years  of  powers  and  activities 
common  to  both  sexes,  to  recognize  the  fact 
that,  since  work  is  a   neuter   noun,  where 
woman  the  worker  is  concerned,  the  chiv- 
alry of  disregarding  her  sex  is  greater  than 
the  chivalry  of  recognizing  it.     Both  men 
and  women   were   equally  culpable   in    the 
sex-consciousness  of  two  centuries  ago.    To- 
day it   is  women,   and    not  men,   who  are 
responsible  for  it. 

"3 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


It  is  easy  to  recall  the  national  illustration 
of  this  at  the  time  of  the  World's  Fair,  when, 
quite  ignoring  the  fact  that  the  World's  Fair 
was  an  exhibition  not  of  workers  but  of 
work  and  of  its  results,  the  women  of  the 
country  rapturously  segregated  their  exhibits 
in  a  building  designed  by  a  woman,  built  by 
a  woman,  decorated  by  women,  and  matron- 
ized  by  "lady  managers."  Now,  if  the 
work  of  women,  judged  by  the  standards  of 
work  alone,  was  of  sufficient  dignity  and 
gravity  to  entitle  it  to  recognition  in  a  rep- 
Tke  segre-  rcscntative  exhibition  like  this,  then,  by  all 
womeJ{  means,  it  should  have  been  put  in  its  proper 
place,  alongside  the  work  of  men,  to  win 
acknowledgment  on  its  merits  alone.  The 
fact  that  it  was  the  work  of  a  woman  had  no 
more  real  significance  than  the  color  of  the 
hair,  or  the  shape  of  the  face,  of  the  woman 
who  did  the  work.  To  make  a  separate  ex- 
hibit of  women's  work  does  no  honor  to 
women,  no  matter  how  good  the  work  may 
be,  for  it  seems  to  make  a  marvel  of  what  is 
no  marvel  at  all,  namely,  that  women  are  as 
capable  as  men  in  most  things,  more  capa- 

114 


■work 


The  Evolution  of  "Woman' 


takes. 


ble  than  men  in  many  things,  and  utterly 
incapable  of  a  few  things  that  men  do  very 
well.  Since,  therefore,  a  clever  woman  is  and  iu  mis- 
hardly  to  be  regarded  as  a  precocity  or 
monstrosity,  like  a  trained  monkey  or  a 
"dog  walking  on  his  hind  legs,"  the  fact 
that  she  has  painted  a  remarkable  picture,  or 
embroidered  a  wonderful  tapestry,  or  in- 
vented a  churn  operated  by  electricity,  or 
chiselled  a  piece  of  marble  into  poetic  form, 
offers  no  warrant  for  segregation  on  the  part 
of  women-workers  such  as  this  exhibition 
displayed.  Even  the  imposing  collection  of 
books,  written  exclusively  by  women  and 
kept  with  such  devotional  spirit  in  the 
library  in  the  woman's  building,  had  no  sig- 
nificance, unless  one  sees  a  fine  humor  about 
it  all ;  for  if  this  collection  were  not  worth 
making  for  its  intrinsic  value,  it  certainly 
does  not  redound  to  the  glory  of  womankind 
that  it  should  have  been  made  for  any  other 
reason.  If  the  genius  of  the  writer  and  the 
understanding  of  the  people  be  not  enough 
to  keep  a  book  from  perishing,  no  antiseptic 
of  sex  can  do  so. 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


The  fact  that  the  "Woman's  Exhibition" 
misrepresented  clever  women  by  representing 
them  as  precocities  is  not  the  only  objection 
to  it.  It  is  impossible  that  any  display  of  ma- 
terial results,  such  as  was  there  offered,  should 
do  justice  to  the  most  important  and  influ- 
ential work  of  women.  For  this  work  deals 
The  real  with  things  Spiritual,  and  not  with  things 
'^uomen.  temporal.  It  is  social — in  the  broad  sense 
of  the  word — and  is  what  the  short-sighted 
economists  call  unproductive.  For,  with  all 
their  wide  opportunities  for  work  outside  the 
home,  the  majority  of  women  elect  the  work 
that  keeps  them  within  its  walls.  They 
neither  paint  pictures,  nor  carve  statues,  nor 
write  books,  nor  make  inventions,  but  they 
rear  their  sons  in  the  ways  of  upright  men 
and  teach  their  daughters  the  glory  of  woman- 
liness. They  are  the  friends  and  counsellors 
of  their  husbands.     They  do  the 

"little  kindnesses 
Which  most  leave  undone,  or  despise, 
For  naught  that  sets  one  heart  at  ease, 
And  giveth  happiness  or  peace, 
Is  low-esteemed  in  their  eyes." 

ii6 


do) 


The  Evolution  of  "  Woman  " 

These  are  the  women  who  have  what  is 
asked  for  in  the  wisdom  of  the  old  hymn, 
"  a  heart  at  leisure  from  itself  to  soothe  and 
sympathize."  And  can  there  be  a  more 
heavenly  freedom  than  this  freedom  of  mind  Real  free- 
and  heart  from  themselves  ?  For,  after  all,  I 
suspect,  it  is  never  life  that  we  tire  of,  but 
only  ourselves  ;  the  little,  petty,  tiresome, 
egotistic  selves  to  which  we  are  bound  and 
with  which  we  drag  along  a  tormented  and 
retarded  living.  This  is  not  sentiment  only  ; 
it  is  a  great  spiritual  truth  that  the  individ- 
ual never  reaches  its  fullest  development  until 
it  ceases  to  care  for  self-expression  in  desir- 
ing to  show  forth  that  something  beyond 
itself  which  is  the  Universal  Self.  More- 
over, the  growth  of  the  individual  is  best  ac- 
complished by  the  same  carelessness  of  self — 
a  trustful  carelessness,  after  all,  since  it  leaves 
the  matter  of  growth  where  it  belongs,  with 
Nature,  because  it  knows  that  growth  is  her 
affair,  not  ours.  When  the  individual  seeks 
too  anxiously  to  work  out  his  own  devel- 
opment and  perfection,  nature  steps  aside 
and  lets  him  do  the  work.     The  result  is  an 

117 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


Differen- 
tiation is 
not  progres- 
sion. 


artifice,  not  the  type;  decadence,  not  pro- 
gression. For,  just  as  we  may  throw  any 
part  of  the  organism  out  of  health  by  con- 
centrating attention  upon  it,  so,  by  self-con- 
sciousness we  may  over-individualize  our- 
selves into  the  decadent,  who  understands 
and  is  happy  only  in  differentiation.  The 
instinct  of  children  is  better  wisdom;  noth- 
ing makes  a  child  so  unhappy  as  to  be  in 
some  way  unlike  his  playmates  in  those  ex- 
ternals which  he  understands ;  a  difference 
in  his  clothes,  in  his  speech,  in  the  way  his 
hair  is  cut,  gives  him  the  most  acute  dis- 
tress. He  seems  to  have  a  glimpse  of  the 
truth  that  the  universal  is  the  normal,  that 
the  type  is  the  only  thing  that  endures ;  if 
there  were  words  for  his  wisdom,  he  would 
perhaps  tell  us  that  self-consciousness  is  the 
creaking  of  machinery  that  is  out  of  order. 

In  any  gathering  of  women  for  Woman's 
sake,  the  phrase  "  the  emancipation  of  Wom- 
an "  sounds  like  a  recurrent  Wagnerian  motif 
through  all  the  storm  and  stress.  But  the 
real  emancipation  of  Woman  will  come  only 
when  she  is  emancipated  from  herself. 

ii8 


THE   CASE   OF   MARIA 


THE  CASE  OF   MARIA 


M' 


Y  friend  Mrs.  Talbot  recently  became 
the  proud  and  happy  mistress  of  a 
most  perfect  maid.  She  was  trim,  respect- 
ful, not  too  pretty,  quiet,  and  exquisite  in  Theregui- 
the  performance  of  all  her  duties.  For  perfect 
weeks  Mrs.  Talbot's  drawing-room  had  an 
air  of  radiant  cleanliness  ;  the  brasses  shone 
like  gold,  no  breath  nor  film  of  dust  clouded 
the  deep  pools  of  color  in  the  mahogany, 
while  the  subtle  blending  of  respect  and  ap- 
preciation in  Maria's  table-service  was  such 
as  to  set  the  most  timid  guest  at  ease.  As 
time  went  on  there  appeared  no  unpleasant 
train  of  social-minded  friends,  or  relatives 
with  alarming  and  recurrent  diseases.  Maria 
seldom  went  out,  and  took  her  mistress's  in- 
terests on  her  shoulders  in  a  capable  and 
motherly  way.    The  problem  of  living  seemed 

121 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


solved  at  last ;  and  Mrs.  Talbot  made  whole 
the  shattered  remains  of  her  faith  in  human 
nature  and  assumed  the  complacent  air  of 
one  whose  virtues  have  finally  met  their  just 
reward.  But  Mr.  Talbot  was  sceptical,  and 
was  heard  openly  to  declare  that  the  situa- 
tion was  quite  beyond  belief,  and  that  he  ex- 
pected the  entire  Talbot  family  would  be 
found  strangled  in  their  beds  some  fine  morn- 
ing. For  four  months  this  state  of  bliss  en- 
dured. Meanwhile  a  certain  joyous  indif- 
ference on  the  part  of  Mrs.  Talbot  to  the 
sufferings  of  others  was  a  sad  trial  to  her  less 
fortunate  friends.  Then  the  blow  fell. 
For  several  evenings  the  sound  of  a  banjo, 


Playing  ike  not  played  by  Marion  Talbot's  accomplished 

banjo  is  not  i      i  /-  ■>       ^   •      ■<  • 

oneoftium.  fingcrs,  souudcd  up  from  the  kitchen  mto  the 
drawing-room.  It  was  no  light,  pleasing 
tinkle,  either,  but  the  solid,  deliberate,  two- 
toned  plunkings  of  an  instrument  with  un- 
tuned strings  swept  by  unaccustomed  fingers. 
It  was  Maria.  Maria  had  bought  a  banjo 
and  was  practising  o'  nights ;  moreover, 
Maria  was  asking  to  go  out  once  a  week  to 
take  a  lesson  of  a  "  professor."     Mr.  Talbot 

122 


The  Case  of  Maria 


laughed  and  advised  compromise,  but  Mrs. 
Talbot  and  Miss  Talbot  were  firm.  Banjo- 
playing  by  the  parlor-maid  was  not  compati- 
ble with  the  dignity  of  the  family.  Maria's 
services  were  quite  perfect,  without  including 
any  knowledge  of  musical  instruments.  "  I 
play  the  banjo  myself,"  cried  Miss  Talbot, 
hotly,  "and,  besides,  how  ridiculous  we 
should  become  in  everybody's  eyes  if  we  were 
continually  kept  explaining  to  our  friends 
that  we  had  a  superior  kind  of  parlor-maid 
whom  we  allowed  to  play  the  banjo  in  the 
evening  !  ' ' 

Mrs.  Talbot  interviewed  Maria ;  then  wept 
the  tears  of  one  who  feels  herself  to  be  in- 


deed the  plaything  of  fate,   for  it  was  aut  Ant  banjo 

•  1    in-      •  -r.  1  aut  nullus. 

banjo,  aut  fiidlus  with  Maria.  By  much  sav- 
ing and  self-denial  (she  supported  a  mother 
and  two  sisters  out  of  her  wages),  she  had  at 
last  accomplished  the  dearest  hope  of  her  life, 
and  was  in  no  mind  to  be  thwarted  now. 
So  Maria  went,  dangling  the  banjo-case  re- 
spectfully but  firmly.  And  the  Talbots  be- 
came as  the  rest  of  us  once  more. 

It  is  only  women  who  are  capable  of  up- 

123 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


holding  principles  by  such  heroic  sacrifices 
as  these.  I  suspect,  too,  it  is  only  women 
who  are  able  to  discern  the  existence  of  a 
principle  inimical  to  society  in  such  a  situ- 
ation ;  for  while  Mrs.  Talbot  and  Marion 
were  unanimous  and  unequivocal  in  their  re- 
Mr.  Talbot  scntmcnt,  Mr.  Talbot  was  openly  perplexed, 
^pieZd.  and  betrayed  secret  sympathies  with  Maria. 
He  seemed  to  catch  an  occasional  sniff  of  a 
principle  somewhere,  latent  but  violated,  and 
it  made  him  uneasy.  "  There  is  something 
wrong,"  he  declared,  "when  a  girl,  simply 
because  she  engages  to  do  certain  duties  in  a 
house,  is  not  allowed  the  gratification  of  her 
single  impulse  toward  an  elevation  of  mind 
or  taste.  I  should  like  to  see  myself  setting 
up  a  rule  to  prevent  my  men  playing  the 
banjo  after  mill  hours — or  the  jews-harp, 
either.' '  ' '  Then, ' '  asked  Mrs.  Talbot,  lofti- 
ly, "do  I  understand  that  you  would  accept 
the  organization  of  a  brass  band  among  our 
domestics,  for  evening  rehearsals  in  the 
kitchen  ?  ' '  Men  are  notoriously  averse  to 
the  argunientum  ad  hominem,  therefore  the 
conversation  languished  at  once.     It  was  a 

124 


The  Case  of  Maria 


great  pity,  because  probably  Mr.  Talbot's  in- 
tellect, progressing  toward  the  next  step  of 
the  proposition,  would  have  hit  upon  what 
seems  to  me  the  kernel  of  the  whole  difficulty 
in  this  seemingly  hopeless,  inextricable,  deli- 
cately complicated  problem — the  labor  ques- 
tion in  our  kitchens. 

For  that  is  what  it  really  is,  call  it  what 
you   will — "the    housekeeping    problem," 
*' domestic  service,"  or  "the  servant  ques-    The  labor 
tion."     It  is  no  special  and  peculiar  problem  our  kUch- 


which  attends  naturally  upon  the  existence 
of  a  home,  as  fungi  spring  up  in  a  favorable 
soil.  It  is  an  integral  part  of  that  great  la- 
bor question  which  is  going  to  remain  with 
us,  "until  we  have  shaken  off  the  dead 
hand  of  feudalism  which  still  presses  with 
crushing  weight  upon  the  people  through 
almost  all  the  form  sand  institutions  of  the 
present  day  society."  And  it  is  more  hope- 
less and  distressing  at  the  present  day  than 
any  other  form  of  the  labor  problem,  be- 
cause it  conforms  least  to  the  natural  laws 
which  are  allowed  to  regulate,  more  or  less 
freely,  labor  outside  the  home. 

125 


ens. 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


I  have  no  mind  to  harrow  up  the  minds  of 
my  readers  with  any  explication  of  the  miser- 
ies and  mysteries  that  confront  the  average 
Definition     housckecper  in  the  daily  maintenance  of  a 

of  a,  hero- 
ine, simple  but  comfortable  existence  for  her  fam- 
ily ;  as  for  herself,  an  existence  at  all  seems 
a  struggle  which  at  times  she  would  gladly 
give  over.  One  might  define  a  heroine  as 
the  average  American  woman  who  does  her 
own  housekeeping.  But  some  hint  of  the 
unnatural  and  unhappy  state  of  affairs  exist- 
ing at  present  may  be  deduced  from  the  con- 
sideration of  two  economic  facts.  First, 
woman  is,  by  nature,  the  home-founder  and 
the  home-maker.  This  is  not  intended  as 
an  assertion  of  personal  belief,  but  as  a  state- 
ment of  scientific  fact.  It  was  woman — not 
man — who  opened  the  industrial  world  \  it 
was  woman  who  made  the  first  rude  dwell- 
ings, and  dressed  skins,  and  wove  textiles 
for  clothing.  It  was  woman,  and  not  man, 
who  made  the  first  fire,  and  the  first  utensils 
for  cooking,  and  the  first  rude  tools  for  in- 
dustrial ends.  All  her  activities  clustered 
about  the   hearth   and    ministered    to   the 

126 


The  Case  of  Maria 


home.  If  the  woman  and  the  work  had  not 
reacted  upon  each  other  so  that,  to-day, 
women  should  be  by  nature  home-makers 
and  home-lovers,  there  are  still  depths  for 
the  scientists  to  sound  in  the  working  of 
heredity  and  of  natural  selection.  And  yet, 
— here  is  my  second  fact — the  enormous 
piles  of  stone  and  brick  rapidly  filling  the 
choice  plots  of  ground  in  our  large  cities 
and  shutting  out  the  light  of  heaven  with 
their  gabled  tops,  are  mute  if  not  magnifi- 
cent witness  to  the  fact  that  the  investment 
of  capital  is  all  against  the  perpetuation  of 
the  separate  home.  The  shrewd  modern  in-  The  opinion 
vestor  is  willing  to  put  hundreds  of  thou-  ''fri\'nvef-' 
sands  against  hundreds  of  dollars  that  (for 
his  lifetime  at  least)  women  are  going  to 
prefer  the  ease  of  the  apartment  hotel  to  the 
separate  house,  with  its  privacy,  its  o^^^l 
table,  and — alas — its  own  service. 

I  do  not  believe  that  this  new  economic 
recognition  of  a  serious  change  in  certain 
social  conditions  means  that  the  constitution 
or  the  tastes  of  women  have  undergone  any 
radical  change,  but   only   that    the   matter 

127 


tor. 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


neivspapers 
say 


of  founding  a  home  has  become  so  difficult 
and  so  complex  that  ordinary  strength  and 
courage  fail  before  it.  The  love  for  the 
home  is  as  abiding  as  ever,  but  the  conduct 
of  the  home  is  a  problem  that  seems  yearly- 
more  hopeless  of  solution  ;  so,  many  a  wom- 
an, hiding  her  defeat  under  a  brave  front 
of  preference,  sells  her  house,  stores  her  de- 
feated household  gods,  and  retreats  into  the 
hired  splendors  of  the  apartment  hotel. 
What  the  Then  the  newspapers  and  reviews  have  long 
articles  written,  proving  that  the  increase  of 
wealth  and  the  modern  love  of  luxury  and 
display  are  doing  away  with  all  disposition 
toward  that  simple  domestic  life  which  was 
the  intent  of  the  founders  of  the  republic, 
and  which  must  ever  be  the  bulwark  of  de- 
mocracy. 

Despite  the  popular  theory  which  origi- 
nates the  housekeeping  problem  in  the  con- 
fusions and  perplexities  of  the  present  social 
condition,  the  truth  is  that  the  labor  problem 
in  the  home  is  older  than  this  generation, 
older  than  this  country,  and  is,  in  fact,  ex- 
actly as  old  as  human  nature  itself.     There 

128 


The  Case  of  Maria 


is  a  great  deal  of  very  comforting  reading  for 
housekeepers  in  Mrs.  Earle's  "  Colonial 
Dames  and  Goodwives,"  where  good  Chris- 
topher Marshal,  a  well-to-do  Quaker  of  Tkegues- 
Philadelphia,  has  kindly  preserved  for  us  neZ^onef'^ 
some  record  of  his  wife's  afflictions  with 
"  the  girl  Poll  "  and  one  Antony,  a  "  char- 
acter worthy  of  Shakespeare's  comedies." 
A  generation  later  Mrs.  Trollope  found  other 
delicious  episodes  to  record,  when  she  turned 
her  keen  English  eyes  on  "  the  great  experi- 
ment "  in  this  country,  with  Charlotte  and 
Nancy  as  its  special  exponents.  Nor  does 
the  present  situation  in  England  appear  to 
be  any  less  desperate  than  our  own,  if  one 
may  judge  from  the  way  in  which  the  Eng- 
lish mistresses  are  rushing  into  hysterical 
print  in  the  "ladies'  newspapers"  to  dis- 
cuss these  ' '  tyrants. ' '  Says  one  writer  : 
"They  invade  our  drawing-rooms  and  bou- 
doirs, and  as  surely  as  two  or  three  women 
are  gathered  together,  so  surely  will  domes- 
tic service  be  one  of  the  inevitable  topics  of 
conversation.  As  to  taking  up  a  newspaper 
or  a  magazine  without  meeting  that  domestic 

129 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


old  woman  of  the  sea — it  is  a  sheer  impossi- 
bility." 

The  problem,  you  see,  is  not  peculiar  to 
the  complexity  of  modern  living,  nor  even 
norpecui-  to  a  couHtry  whcre  political  institutions  of 
^^untry"  theoretical  equality  are  based  on  a  state  of 
most  glaring  social  inequality.  It  is  to  be 
found  wherever  the  relations  of  dom.estic 
service  are  established,  and  it  has  been,  and 
is,  universally  a  problem,  because  its  con- 
ditions cross-cut  the  first  instincts  of  that 
perdurable  human  nature,  which  is  in  us 
now  as  it  was  in  the  beginning,  and  ever 
shall  be,  world  without  end.  The  relation 
is  fundamentally  wrong,  and  where  prin- 
ciples are  wrong,  details  can  never  be  ad- 
justed. 

The  confusion  begins  when  Maria  and  her 
mistress  meet  in  that  wonderful  arena  of 
ignorance  and  misunderstanding — the  intel- 
ligence office. 

The  mistress  does  all  the  talking. 

I  am  aware  that  certain  dogged  writers  of 
humor  are  in  the  habit  of  making  this  appear 

130 


The  Case  of  Maria 


quite  otherwise,  but  my  own  observations 
bear  out  my  statement.  Maria  usually  man-  Maria  and 
ages  to  stipulate  for  her  "  every  other  Sun-  eVinthefn- 
day"  and  her  "■  every  other  Thursday,"  but  offi'd^"'^' 
for  the  rest,  she  gives  herself  unquestioning, 
unbargaining,  into  the  employ  of  an  unknown 
mistress,  who  seldom  informs  her  definitely 
just  what  is  expected  of  her,  and  who  coldly 
repels  any  attempt  on  Maria's  part  to  find 
out  for  herself.  Yet  I  have  never  been  able 
to  understand  why,  in  a  contract  supposed 
to  be  of  equal  interest,  all  the  right  to  self- 
satisfaction  should  be  on  one  side.  I  see  no 
reason  why  Maria  should  not  ask  questions 
of  Mrs.  Talbot,  as  well  as  Mrs.  Talbot  of 
Maria.  Nor  have  my  own  experiences  led 
me  to  believe  that  in  such  an  encounter 
Maria  is  not  as  likely  to  behave  herself  with 
propriety  and  respect  as  Maria's  employer; 
and  so  far  from  decrying  the  disposition  on 
the  part  of  a  servant  to  ascertain  somewhat 
definitely  beforehand  just  what  is  expected 
of  her,  I  regard  it  as  quite  worthy  of  respect 
and  attention.  "  Do  you  allow  servants  to 
ask  you  questions  in  an  intelligence  office  ?  " 

131 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


— some  Mrs.  Talbot  is  going  to  spear  me  with 
this  question. 

Dear  madam,  I  urge  them  to  do  so.  and 
I  find  that  my  self-respect  is  not  half  as  much 
involved  in  the  consequent  catechising  as  my 
One's  sense  scnse  of  humor.  Linda  Olsen  once  asked 
Ynvoived.  me  if  I  was  an  "easy  mad  lady,"  with  a  dis- 
arming dimple  in  either  pink  cheek.  But 
what  would  you  ?  I  had  just  asked  her  if 
she  had  a  ''  beau  " — the  single  word  which, 
it  seems,  covers  all  tender  relations,  in  good 
Swede-English. 

"  But  you  had  to  know  about  that,"  says 
Mrs.  Talbot,  ''if  you  were  going  to  take 
her  into  your  home."  Indeed  I  did.  I 
trust  that  nothing  but  the  severest  necessity 
could  have  induced  me  to  such  an  un- 
warranted impertinence.  But  I  am  sorry 
I  had  to. 

Now,  supposing  Mrs.  Talbot  to  have  satis- 
fied herself  fairly  that  Maria  is  a  possibility 
— a  wise  woman  never  affirms  more  to  her- 
self— and  Maria  to  have  entered  upon  her 
new  labors.  Mrs.  Talbot  is  kindly,  and 
Maria  has  privileges  which  are  intended  to 

132 


The  Case  of  Maria 


make  her  very  grateful ;  but  the  truth  is 
Maria  has  no  liberty.  She  wears  the  clothes 
her  mistress  prescribes  ;  she  sees  her  friends 
when  and  where  her  mistress  allows ;  she 
eats,  sleeps,  and  moves  always  under  direc-   Maria  is 

ahvays  un- 

tion.     And   she   does   this   for   twenty-four  derdirec- 


hours  out  of  the  twenty-four !  She  may  not 
always  be  under  orders,  but  she  is  always 
under  authority.  Just  here  lies  the  differ- 
ence between  organized  labor  outside  the 
home  and  organized  labor  within  it.  In  the 
former,  are  provided  such  conditions  and 
terminations  of  his  labor  as  give  the  man 
some  chance  to  emerge  from  the  worker. 
The  poorest  puddler  in  the  mill  may  have  his 
own  hours,  his  home,  his  family,  his  associ- 
ates, his  pipe,  his  glass  of  beer.  Maria  has 
nothing.  She  has  neither  home,  nor  family, 
nor  associates,  in  any  real  sense.  She  has 
no  hour  in  the  day  that  she  can  count  upon 
as  being  wholly,  entirely,  inevitably  her 
own,  beyond  the  sudden  call  of  duty.  She 
may  not  even  have  her  banjo. 

Now,   I  am  not  going    to   write   myself 
down  so  incapable  a  housewife  as  to  say  that 

133 


Hon. 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


I  should  have  decided  differently  from  Mrs. 
Talbot  in  the  momentous  matter  of  the  ban- 
jo. I,  too,  should  have  put  ashes  on  my 
head  and  bade  Maria  go,  if  play  she  must ; 
but  I  think  I  should  have  grace  given  to 
me  to  see,  even  in  that  bitter  hour,  that 
Maria  was  no  transgressing  culprit,  but  an 
A  case  of      equal  martyr  with  myself,  and  that  both  of 

double  mar-  .       .  -  •       r  i 

iyrdom.  US  wcrc  the  victmis  of  certain  false  econom- 
ic conditions  which  brought  it  about  that 
Maria's  ideas  as  to  the  pursuit  of  happiness 
for  herself,  were  incompatible  with  my  ideas 
as  to  my  pursuit  of  happiness  for  myself; 
and  that  I,  being  in  the  position  of  advan- 
tage (economically,  not  ethically,  you  un- 
derstand), had  my  way.  The  ethics  of  the 
situation  were  perfectly  sound.  For  cer- 
tainly the  proposition  is  true  that  no  soci- 
ety, or  class  of  society,  can  be  founded  on 
any  permanent  basis  so  long  as  any  elevating 
aspiration  is  held  to  be  reprehensible ;  hu- 
man progress  has  been  entirely  a  matter  of 
individual  aspiration.  Just  as  certainly  is  it 
true  that  if  Maria  chose  to  voice  the  yearn- 
ing  of  her   soul   to   higher  things,  in   the 

134 


The  Case  of  Maria 


plunking  of  the  banjo  (grotesque  as  that  was, 
and  no  doubt  a  waste  of  time  and  money  be- 
sides), her  right  to  express  herself  in  this 
way  was  as  undoubted  as  the  right  of  Mrs. 
Talbot  to  pierce  the  misty  "Twilight  of  the 
Gods,"  if  her  aspirations  carried  her  so  far. 
But,  you  see,  the  practical  outcome  of  it  all 
was  that  Maria's  aspirations  interfered  with 
the  comfort  of  the  family.  Therefore,  Ma- 
ria's relations  to  the  family  ceased.  The 
flaw  was  economic,  since  all  possible  pro- 
vision was  made  for  the  independence  of 
the  employer,  and  none  whatever  for  the  in- 
dependence of  the  employe.  Maria  should 
have  had  some  chance  at  her  own  idea  of 
life  and  at  the  things   that  are  more  than   Maria 

.        ■••■.        1         111  fr  1  should  have 

life — that  is,  Maria  should  have  a  life  and  a  an/eout- 


chance  to  live  it,  outside  the  family  home, 
where  the  comfort  of  a  Talbot  would  in  no 
way  interfere  with  her  aspirations. 

Not  long  ago  there  came  into  my  hands, 
as  the  result  of  one  of  the  popular  "  discus- 
sions" in  the  daily  newspapers,  over  one 
thousand   letters  from   working  women  all 

135 


side. 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


over  the  country.     The  question  asked  was, 
A  popular     "  Is  the  shop  or  factory  preferable  to  domes- 

newspaper 

discussion,  tic  service,  and  why  ?  ' '  The  answers,  Hke 
the  question,  may  have  been  somewhat  un^ 
grammatical,  but  they  were  interesting  and 
most  significant.  Two-thirds  of  the  writers 
advocated  the  greater  desirability  of  factory 
or  shop  work,  and  the  reasons  given  therefor 
were  summed  up  as  follows  : 

Working  hours  are  fixed  in  factory  and 
shop  work,  and  extra  work  is  paid  for. 

The  worker  is  in  the  way  of  advancement, 
if  capable. 

She  receives  orders  from  one  person. 

Outside  her  working  hours,  the  worker's 
life  is  no  concern  of  her  employers.  She  has 
entire  liberty  to  see  her  friends  when  and  where 
she  Hkes;  she  can  read,  study,  improve  herself 
in  any  way  she  chooses  ;  she  can  go  out  when 
she  likes  and  come  in  when  she  likes. 

She  does  not  lose  caste  through  her  em- 
ployment. 

All  these  are  intelligent,  wholesome,  hu- 
man reasons,  and  altogether  to  the  credit  of 
the  girls  who  gave  them. 

136 


The  Case  of  Maria 


On  the  other  hand,  the  house-workers  set 
forth  their  advantages  as  follows : 

Their  work  is  more  healthful  than  factory 
or  shop  work. 

More  money  can  be  saved. 

House-workers  do  not  lose  caste  in  the 
mind  of  any  sensible  person.  (This  some- 
what hysterically.) 

Given  a  good  mistress,  they  have  a  better 
home,  kinder  treatment,  and  as  many  priv- 
ileges as  any  other  workers. 

All  of  which  is  undoubtedly  true,  but  the 
last  statement  begs  the  entire  question.  The 
rights  and  privileges  of  any  class  of  workers 
ought  not  to  be  a  matter  of  entire  com- 
plaisance on  one  side,  and  of  dependence  on 
the  other,  and  domestic  service  should  be  no 
exception.  The  fact  that  it  is  an  exception 
is,  I  believe,  what  is  keeping  the  most  in- 
telligent class  of  girls  out  of  our  homes,  thus 
constantly  levelling  downward  the  compe- 
tence and  desirability  of  the  serving-class. 
I  have  read  many  papers  on  the  domestic 
situation,  written  by  many  mistresses,  and 
nearly  all  of  them  relegate  the  millennium  of 

137 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


housekeeping  to  that  glorious  but  dim  future 
Tke  muien-  when  we  are  all  alike  to  discover  the  dignity 
^housekee/-  of  household  labor,  and  the  possibility  of  its 
wonderful  elevation  to  a  science  and  an  art. 
But  no  labor  is  dignified  unless  the  dignity 
of  the  worker  be  preserved,  and  no  worker 
can  retain  his  dignity  if  his  individual  lib- 
erty is  entirely  ignored.  This,  I  think,  is 
at  base  the  reason  why  domestic  servants 
lose  caste — a  fact  which  most  mistresses  are 
sturdy  to  deny,  but  which  they  may  as  well 
admit,  since  the  domestics  themselves  accept 
it.  "I  can't  let  him  come  and  see  me, 
ma'am,"  said  my  Amelia,  naively,  in  ad- 
mitting the  tender  relation.  "  He  don't 
know  I  am  a  living-out  girl.  He  couldn't 
have  me,  if  he  did.  His  folks  wouldn't  let 
him." 

Human  nature  has  wonderfully  sly  ways  of 
getting  at  the  truth  of  things,  and  the  subtle 
sense  of  disapproval  which  is  at  the  bottom 
of  the  recognition  of  social  loss  in  domestic 
service  comes,  I  believe,  from  a  subcon- 
scious but  acute  recognition  of  the  fact  that 
at  present  it  demands  a  greater  giving  up  of 

X38 


The  Case  of  Maria 


personal  liberty  than  is  consistent  with  per- 
sonal dignity.  No  wonder  the  American 
girl  who  goes  out  to  service  is  nearly  as  ex- 
tinct as  the  buffalo  !     The  American  girl  has    ivhy 

.  A  til  erica 

the  disadvantage  of  brains.     She  sees  things  e^ru  are 

°  _       not  in  set 

clearly,  directly,  without  reference  to  tradi-  ^''ce. 
tion  or  twaddle.  She  knows  that  domestic 
service,  although  the  best  paid,  is  the  most 
undesirable  work  she  can  undertake,  because 
it  brings  with  it  none  of  the  human  rewards 
that  are  better  than  money.  Not  one  of  the 
considerations  which  impel  girls  to  choose 
shop-work,  comes  in  to  make  her  work  dig- 
nified and  in  conformity  with  the  laws  of 
human  nature.  As  things  are  now,  if  I 
were  a  working-girl,  as  I  am  an  American, 
I  would  never  go  out  to  service ;  never, 
never,  never  ! 

And  neither  would  you,  if  you  were  to 
tell  the  honest  truth. 

In  a  most  sincere  and  convincing  paper, 
in  an  equally  sincere  and  helpful  little  book 
by  Ethel  Davis,  is  a  paragraph  into  which  is 
compressed  so  much  truth,  historical  and  so- 

139 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


ciological,    and    so    much    practical    good 
sense,  that  I  want  to  transcribe  it  here. 

"  From  the  eighth  to  the  fourteenth  cen- 
tury men  grappled  with  these  same  difificul- 
Tke  history  tics  In  the  relations  between  the  nobility  and 

■zvkich  is  re-  ,  .         .        .  ,  ,  , 

Peatiagit-     the  tradcs,  beginning  the  struggle  a  thou- 

self. 

sand  years  before  women  are  ready  to  ac- 
knowledge that  such  difficulties  have  a  right 
to  exist.  In  the  time  of  Charlemagne  every 
noble  of  importance  had  within  his  personal 
control  artisans  of  all  trades  needed  to  sup- 
ply his  daily  wants.  Each  chateau  was  a 
miniature  city,  within  the  precincts  of  which 
dwelt  armorers,  carriage-builders,  saddlers, 
spinners,  carpenters,  and  other  laborers. 
Many  of  the  relations  between  these  workers 
and  the  seigniors  who  protected,  controlled, 
and  supported  them  in  exchange  for  their 
services,  were  the  same  as  between  the 
household  servants  and  their  employers  of 
to-day,  and  the  desire  for  personal  freedom 
and  the  opportunity  to  develop  their  in- 
dividuality grew  fierce  and  bitter  on  the 
part  of  the  artisans.  In  those  feudal  sur- 
roundings the  power    of   the  nobility  was 

140 


The  Case  of  Maria 


strong,  and  the  fight  for  freedom  which  was 
begun    at   that    time    lasted    six    hundred 
years.     Through  the  clever  use  of  the  one 
liberty  that  these  workmen  possessed — that 
of  choosing  their  own  masters — and  the  or- 
ganizing of  guilds,  they   slowly   won  their 
personal  independence  in  spite  of  the  power- 
ful resistance  of  the  nobility.     Besides  the 
arguments  of  arms  and  oppression,  they  had 
to   fight   those   we   now   hear  advanced  in 
favor  of  the  condition  of  domestic  service. 
They  could  have  better  homes,  better  pro- 
tection, and  the  assistance  of  the  class  in 
power,    if    they   remained    in  the  chateau. 
They  preferred  hunger,  oppression,  and  suf- 
fering with  the  freedom  to  struggle  for  a  po- 
sition that  would  secure  to  their  children  or   Thcpur- 
their  children's  children  the  precious  right  piness. 
to  the  '  pursuit  of  happiness.'  " 

Out  of  this,  as  we  think  of  it,  emerges 
this  truth  :  We  women  have  been  weary- 
ing ourselves  in  the  rush  after  a  superficial 
knowledge  of  many  things,  and  particularly 
of  the  subjects  that  have  specially  engaged 
the  attention  of  men,  in  order  that  we  might 

141 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


become  their  political  peers  and  reform  their 
political  abuses.  Yet  in  the  management  of 
the  one  kingdom  that  has  been  ours  from  the 
beginning,  we  are  harking  back  to  the  Mid- 
dle Ages  and  the  institutions  which  modern 
society  cast  aside  long  ago.  Like  the  king  in 
Queens  who  the  story,  our  queens  want  to  "go  out  govern- 

gO  out  P'OV-  •■LIT 

ernini.  \Xig  by  the  day  or  week,"  while  the  kingdom 
that  has  always  been  theirs  rests  in  its  prim- 
itive state  of  anarchy  and  disorganization. 

All  the  more  to  be  deplored  is  this  con- 
dition of  affairs,  because  we  are  never  done 
talking  about  it.  We  have  been  fond  of 
presenting  ourselves  (with  that  taste  for 
mart}Tdom  Avhich  most  good  women  pos- 
sess) as  the  helpless  creatures  of  a  condition 
already  hopeless,  and  passing  on  into  de- 
spair. Yet  we  have  never  given  the  situation 
the  small  amount  of  quiet  thought  necessary 
to  discover  that  the  solution  of  the  problem 
lies,  not  in  the  endless  adjustment  and  re- 
adjustment of  personal  and  sentimental  de- 
tails, but  is  to  be  accomplished  by  the  pa- 
tient, careful  study  of  that  political  economy 
and   sociology   with   which  we  have   been 

142 


The  Case  of  Maria 


reason 
why  women 
shoul, 
vote. 


wrestling  for  the  sake  of  outside  reforms. 
It  might  appear  to  a  profane  observer  of  the 
situation,  that,  until  women  shall  have  given   One 

iv/iy  ivoyn 

evidence  of  some  small  political  sagacity,  shouldn't 
some  desire  for  reform,  and  a  very  little  ca- 
pacity for  organization  in  that  department  of 
the  world's  sociology  with  which  the  home 
is  concerned,  there  is  no  glaring  injustice  in 
denying  them  a  share  in  the  government  of 
the  country. 

It   is   not   to   be   denied  that  the  labor 

problem  in  the  home  is  peculiarly  difficult 

and  complicated,  since  its  conditions  vary 

somewhat  with  the  habits  and  requirements 

of  each  household ;  but  that  it  is  anything 

more  than  difficult — that  it  is  unsolvable — I 

do  not  for  a  moment  believe.     The  trouble 

is  that  each  mistress  insists  upon    looking 

at  it  as  an  aggregation  of  individual  cases, 

amorphous  and  meaningless  as  a  snow-bank, 

instead  of  understanding   that  were  a  few 

fundamental    principles   of    economics    ap- 

pHed,  the  entire  situation  would  fall  into 

structure  and  significance. 

143 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


When  I  first  began  to  think  upon  this 
subject,  I  found  myself  settling  steadily 
toward  two  conclusions :  first,  that  the 
existing  antagonism  between  mistress  and 
The  begin-  maid  had  its  origin,  not  in  natural  ill-will 
lagfnfsmT  nor  in  class  antagonism,  but  in  wrong  eco- 
nomic conditions  ;  second,  that  the  funda- 
mental economic  wrong  was  in  the  housing 
of  the  employed  with  the  employers — with 
the  constant  action  and  reaction  of  the  one 
class  upon  the  other.  After  ten  years'  think- 
ing upon  the  subject,  I  still  think  so.  The 
entire  situation  must  be  "  hatched  over  and 
hatched  different,"  after  Mrs.  Poyser's  radi- 
cal methods  of  reform.  The  housewife  is 
distinctly  in  competition  to-day  with  other 
employers  of  labor.  Why  not  take  a  leaf 
out  of  our  enemy's  book,  and  secure  for  our 
own  employes  the  advantages  that  other  la- 
bor offers?  Given  this  change,  nearly  all  of 
the  advantages  claimed  by  the  shop  or  fac- 
tory girls  for  their  work  would  be  secured. 
Working  hours  would  be  fixed,  and  extra 
work  would  be  paid  for.  Outside  of  work- 
ing hours  the  girl  would  have  that  right  to 

144 


The  Case  of  Maria 


live  after  her  own  ideas  of  happiness,  which 
should  be  hers  as  much  as  ours.  She  could 
have   that   intercourse  with  her  own   class    Therightto 

,.,  1         T-T  ,.,..,,     happiness. 

which  can  never  be  denied  to  the  individual 
without  loss,  and,  having  equal  liberty  with 
other  classes  of  workers,  she  would  no  longer 
lose  caste. 

I  am  not  so  filled  with  the  new  wine  of 
theory  as  to  believe  that  such  readjustment 
of  the  family  living  as  would  be  required 
by  so  radical  a  change  in  domestic  service 
could  be  easily  brought  about.  It  would 
require,  first  of  all,  careful  study  and  prep- 
aration ;  second,  cautious  and  concerted  ex- 
ecution on  the  part  of  mistresses  ;  and  third, 
fourth,  and  fifth,  intelhgence.  But  why  not 
make  ourselves  and  our  own  needs  the  ob- 
jects of  some  of  our  reformatory  and  philan- 
thropic zeal  for  a  little  while?  Why  not 
put  this  in  our  list  of  ' '  Things  to  be  Tried ' ' 
along  with  "  Municipal  Reform  "  and  ''Anti- 
Vivisection  "  and  ''Flower  Missions"  and 
'  'Health  Protection  ?  ' '  Surely  no  class  of  the 
poor  need  attention  more  than  the  poor 
mistresses,  and  no  condition   of  municipal 

145 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


mismanagement  is  more  notorious  or  more 
desperate  than  the  mismanagement  of  our 
kitchens. 


In  many  ways  the  times  are  ripe  for  such 
an  experiment.  The  number  of  finished 
products  brought  daily  into  our  homes,  as 
the  result  of  outside  labor,  is  constantly  in- 
creasing. No  mistress,  however  conserva- 
tive and  hearth-bound,  now  disregards  the 
advantage  and  propriety  of  having  her  laun- 
dry "done  out"  and  much  of  her  baking 
brought  in.  She  buys  a  great  deal  of  the 
family  clothing  ready-made,  and  takes  no 
The  advan-  Tcproach  to  hcrself  thcrcfor.  She  ''sends 
peseni.  '^  out  "  for  a  cook  by  the  hour,  and  a  second 
waitress  for  her  dinners ;  perhaps  her  win- 
dows are  cleaned,  her  silver  polished,  and 
her  bric-a-brac  dusted  by  outsiders.  Her 
charwoman  is  always  an  outsider,  as  is,  of- 
ten, her  furnace-man,  her  gardener,  and  her 
coachman.  The  substitution  of  gas  and 
electric  cooking  for  the  old-fashioned  range, 
by  giving  us  better  results  with  less  time  and 
labor,  makes  the  possibility  of  organizing 

146 


The  Case  of  Maria 


South. 


domestic  labor  immeasurably  greater.  I 
believe  changes  can  be  made  by  which  the 
cook,  the  waitress,  the  nurse,  and  even  the 
maid-of-all-work  may  go  out  of  our  homes 
after  a  fixed  number  of  hours,  and  be  free  to 
live  their  own  lives,  while  the  lighter  ser- 
vices of  the  evening  can  be  provided  for,  if 
desired,  by  a  single  servant  whose  days  are 
her  own.  In  the  South,  the  colored  house-  The  ar- 
servants  still  have  their  own  quarters  outside  /^X"'^"' 
the  homes  of  their  employers,  just  as  they  did 
in  the  days  of  slavery. 

The  following  quotation  from  a  letter  re- 
ceived very  recently  from  a  Southern  mis- 
tress, may  help  to  make  it  clear  that  this 
arrangement  is  not  regarded  by  them  as  al- 
together unfortunate  : 

"In  the  Texas  town,  our  colored  cooks 
all  went  home  at  night  to  their  own  cabins. 
There  they  played  the  banjo,  entertained 
their  friends,  held  revival  services,  and 
sometimes  fought  among  themselves,  with  a 
freedom  which  would  not  have  been  possibfb 
in  the  home  of  the  '  white  lady,'  but  which 
was  very  essential  to  their  happiness.    .    .    . 

147 


Tlje  Unquiet  Sex 


My  cook  never  missed  coming  in  the  morning 
to  her  work  for  three  years,  except  one  day 
when  she  was  really  ill,  although  she  suffered 
a  great  deal  from  her  fear  of  ghosts  when  she 
came  before  daylight  in  the  winter-time.  I 
could  keep  her  over  her  time  when  necessary, 
by  giving  her  a  trifle  extra  and  allowing 
her  to  provide  an  escort  to  see  her  safely 
home. ' ' 

It  is  not  the  purpose  of  this  paper  to  do 
more  than  suggest  the  general  lines  along 
which  it  seems  to  be  profitable  to  direct  our 
attention.  Therefore  I  have  left  untouched 
the  innumerable  questions  and  objections 
which  will  spring  up  for  discussion — and 
disagreement — in  the  mind  of  every  house- 
keeper who  reads  this  paper.  But  I  believe 
that  I  see  a  great  many  of  the  objections, 
and  I  do  not  find  them  insuperable,  nor,  in- 
deed, in  many  cases,  nearly  so  hard  of  set- 
tlement, as  the  difficulties  which  are  con- 
stantly bubbling  up  out  of  the  uneasy  waters 
now. 
A  valid  ob-  There  is,  however,  one  objection  sure  to 
suggest  Itself  which  does  seem  very  real  at 


148 


The  Case  of  Maria 


first  thought ;  that  is,  that  servants,  in  most 
cases,  have  no  homes  to  go  to,  or  else  the 
homes  are  so  poor  and  unhealthful  as  to 
make  it  undesirable  that  they  should  come 
daily  into  our  homes  from  them.  This  is 
perfectly  true  of  the  class  of  foreign  or  igno- 
rant servants  with  whom  we  are  at  present 
struggling,  but  it  seems  to  me  altogether 
practical  to  believe  that  the  greater  desira- 
bility of  domestic  service  which  would  be 
brought  about  by  putting  it  on  a  plane  with 
other  labor,  would  bring  into  it  just  the  class 
of  intelligent,  home-reared  girls  most  to  be 
desired.  More  than  that,  if  the  large  serv- 
ing class  in  our  country  were  in  permanent 
need  of  decent,  cheap  living-quarters,  capital 
would  drift  that  w^ay.     A  movement  in  one   a  new 

investment 

of  the  largest  working-woman's  associations  /or  capital. 
in  this  country  is  just  now  by  way  of  com- 
passing such  an  end.  In  this  association  is 
a  special  club,  formed  only  of  domestic  ser- 
vants, the  purpose  of  which  is  both  intellect- 
ual and  social.  It  has  meetings  for  the  dis- 
cussion of  questions  relating  to  their  work 
and  their  interests,  it  has  organized  a  mutual 

149 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


benefit  society  for  the  assistance  of  members 
who  are  ill  or  unemployed,  and  it  is  looking 
forward  to  the  establishment  of  a  respectable, 
cheap  boarding-house  for  servants,  by  means 
of  which  may  be  avoided  the  present  crowd- 
ing of  unemployed  workers  in  the  unclean 
and  unhealthful  tenements  that  now  serve  as 
their  retreat  when  they  are  not  in  situations. 
This  disposition  on  the  part  of  house- workers 
to  organize  for  themselves,  wherever  they  see 
the  desirability,  is  very  hopeful,  and  not  a 
little  touching,  when  one  stops  to  reflect  up- 
on their  slender  equipment  in  training  and 
money. 

With  the  organization,  some  four  years 

ago,  of  the  National  Household  Economic 

Association,  the  greatest  encouragement  was 

given  that,  at  last,  definite  and  constructive 

Tke  ideas  were  to  be  brought  to  bear  upon  the 

Household     chaos  of  the  situation.     And  much  has  been 

Association,  already  accomplished.     Now  if  the  women's 

clubs  of  this  country  could  be  led  to  take  up 

the  study  and  adjustment  of  the  problem, 

with  the  sincerity  and  sagacity  and  spirit  of 

150 


The  Case  of  Maria 


co-operation  which  characterize  their  work 
in  other  ways,  in  two  or  three  years  they 
would  be  able  to  formulate  a  set  of  princi- 
ples for  domestic  labor  that  would  serve  as 
a  solid  framework  for  details. 

There  have  been,  it  is  true,  for  several 
years  tentative  and  sporadic  organizations  of 
mistresses  in  different  places  here  and  there 
all  over  the  country ;  but  the  attention  of 
these  housekeepers'  clubs  has  been  mainly 
directed  to  the  philanthropic  side  of  the 
question,  that  is,  to  the  training  of  servants 
themselves  by  means  of  training-schools.  All  The 
of  which  is  helpful  and  hopeful,  to  be  sure,    training 


even  primarily  essential  when  capacity  and 
intelligence  among  servants  are  at  their 
lowest,  as  they  are  to-day.  But  I  am  by  no 
means  certain  that  such  means  are  anything 
more  than  temporary  scaffolding  by  which 
the  main  structure  is  to  be  helped  and  up- 
held. For  the  true  economic  principle  is 
that  the  training  and  equipment  of  the  em- 
ploye are  his  own  affairs.  Unless  the  work 
attracts  the  worker  enough  to  generate  an 
impulse  toward  self-preparation,  there  would 

151 


schools. 


T}}e  Unquiet  Sex 


seem  to  be  a  waste  of  expenditure  in  at- 
tempts on  the  part  of  anyone  else  to  make 
the  path  plain  and  easy.  Training-schools 
of  course  there  must  be,  else  how  shall  girls 
receive  their  training  ?  But  they  should  be, 
in  the  end,  like  the  training-schools  for 
nurses,  conducted  on  business  principles — 
not  philanthropy.  The  servants  of  this 
country  pay  annually  into  the  intelligence 
offices  three  millions  of  dollars.  It  might 
seem  possible  to  make  a  training-school 
something  better  than  a  philanthropic  insti- 
tution, if  some  of  this  misspent  money  could 
be  attracted  toward  a  paying  investment  of 
adequate  self-preparation  for  their  work,  on 
the  part  of  servants. 

The  Social  Science  section  of  the  famous 
ivork  Civic    Club   of    Philadelphia   has   recently 

Civic  Club,  drawn  up  and  put  up  in  the  hands  of  all  its 
members  what  it  calls  ' '  A  Standard  of  Work 
and  Wages  in  Household  Labor,"  to  which 
standard  it  is  expected  that  all  its  members 
will  adhere.  For  certain  wages,  ranging 
from  three  dollars  and  a  half  to  four  dol- 
lars a  week,  certain  definite  requirements  are 

152 


The  Case  of  Maria 


set  down,  in  the  case  of  cooks,  waitresses, 
chambermaids,  laundresses,  seamstresses, 
children's  nurses,  and  general  houseworkers. 
For  example,  a  cook  asking  the  wages  just 
specified  is  required  to  show  a  proper  knowl- 
edge of  the  sink  and  drains,  the  kitchen, 
cellar,  and  ice-chest,  and  the  kitchen  uten- 
sils. She  must  understand  the  making  of 
bread,  biscuit,  muffins,  griddle-cakes,  soup 
stock,  and  plain  soup.  She  must  know  how 
to  cook  meats  in  the  four  elemental  forms 
known  as  broiling,  boiling,  frying,  and  roast- 
ing, and  how  to  dress  and  cook  poultry  and 
fish,  to  prepare  eggs,  oysters,  vegetables,  fruit 
(fresh  and  tinned),  tea,  coffee,  and  plain  des- 
serts. 

Here  is  something  definite  for  both  em- 
ployer and  employe.  Instead  of  leaving 
everything  vague  and  in  the  air  at  the  time  a  precise 

...  ,  dejiniiion 

of  employment,  it  gives  the  cook  an  oppor-  of  duties. 
tunity  of  finding  out  precisely  what  duties 
go  with  the  situation,  and  it  gives  the  mis- 
tress the  right  to  exact  from  an  unwilling  or 
ill-prepared  servant  the  last  letter  of  the 
agreement. 

153 


TJje  Unquiet  Sex 


A  further  provision  is  made,  in  case  any 
of  the  outhnes  of  the  "  good,  plain  cook  " 
presented  in  these  requirements  are  ob- 
scured or  lacking.  The  employer  agrees  to 
furnish  instructions  in  the  points  of  failure, 
the  employe  sharing  half  the  expense  of  such 
instructions.  All  of  this  seems  fair,  and  defi- 
nitely helpful,  and  paves  the  way  to  still 
greater  clearness  and  exactness  of  under- 
standing. 

But  the  final  emancipation  of  both  em- 
ployer and  employe,  and  the  settlem.ent  of 
the     housekeeping    problem,     must     come 
ivork/or      through   wider    and  co-operative  organiza- 
a'ubs.  tion.     A  single  club  has  only  the  unit  value. 

Hundreds  of  women  in  scores  of  clubs,  all 
working  under  the  general  organization  of 
the  National  Association,  taking  up  its  pre- 
scribed course  of  study  and  thinking  tow- 
ard the  same  ends  of  clarification  and  re- 
construction, with  a  calm  allowance  for  ex- 
periment, selecting  carefully  and  after  ample 
test,  such  principles  as  seem  to  them  sound 
and  secure,  and  rejecting  everything  that  is 

154 


The  Case  of  Maria 


unjust;  tenacious  of  their  own  rights  but 
jealous  also  of  the  rights  of  others — such  an 
organization  as  this  would  work  amazing 
advances  in  an  incredibly  short  time.  One 
small  club  of  this  kind  was  established  sev- 
eral years  ago  in  a  Western  town.  After  the 
first  winter  spent  in  the  study  of  domestic    ii-'orAe/ 

.  one  M  est- 

service  and  of  co-operative  housekeeping,  em  dub. 
the  members  of  the  club  became  convinced 
that  the  husband  of  one  of  them  understood 
the  situation,  when  he  declared  they  had  got 
hold  of  the  tail  of  an  unusually  large  and 
lively  idea,  and  that  it  would  probably  af- 
ford them  mental  exercise  for  some  time  to 
come.  Whether  the  club  is  still  in  exist- 
ence I  do  not  know,  but  this  I  do  know 
(because  one  of  the  leading  spirits  of  the 
club  afterward  put  the  declaration  into 
print),  that  the  longer  these  women  studied 
this  question  the  more  they  understood  that 
they  ' '  were  confronted  with  a  problem  hav- 
ing moral  and  social  factors  as  well  as  eco- 
nomic ones,"  and  that  "this  problem  was 
fully  as  important  as  interstate  commerce, 
trades-unions,  or  any  of  the  other  questions 

155 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


which  the  modern  economist  puzzles  his 
brains  over."  Each  member  of  this  club 
became  also  convinced  that  "  while  working 
with  one  hand  with  the  service  question  as 
it  now  is,  she  must  make  ready  with  the 
Radical  other  for  a  change  more  radical  than  any- 
Vmptnding.  thing  that  housekeeping  has  known  for  cen- 
turies." 

Now,  it  seems  fairly  clear  to  me  that  prep- 
aration for  changes  so  fundamental  and  so 
sweeping  as  the  problem  requires  must  come 
from  the  informed  and  thinking  side — that 
is,  from  the  mistresses.  In  a  certain  blind, 
groping  way  the  domestic  workers  are  trying 
to  work  out  the  situation  for  themselves ;  as 
I  have  said,  they  organize  when  and  where 
they  can,  and  when  they  cannot  organize, 
they  still  manifest,  by  the  very  resentment 
and  intolerance  which  are  the  chief  burdens 
the  mistress  has  to  bear,  an  under-sense  of 
something  that  must  be  adjusted.  But  the 
remedy  lies  deeper  than  their  minds  are  able 
to  go  ;  in  that  the  flaw  is  economic  and  is 
only  to  be  apprehended  and  remedied  through 
the  application  of  economic  and  sociological 

156 


The  Case  of  Maria 


laws,  the  minds  that  are  best  able  to  apply 
them  must  develop  them. 

One  underlying  trouble  is  that  in  many    Training 
cases  the  mistress  herself  is  so  ill-mformed  as  tresses, 
to  the  details  of  the  work  she  sets  about 
superintending.     I  thoroughly  believe  with 
Miss  Griswold  (in  her  recent  argument  that 
one  way  of  solving  the  servant  problem  is 
to  train   the  mistresses),    that  ''good  mis- 
tresses are  needed  far  more  than  good  ser- 
vants."      "It   is   no   wonder,"    she   says, 
'*  that   our  women   take    little   pleasure  in 
what  they  do  so  badly,  and  grow  weary  and 
disheartened  when  wrestling  daily   with  a 
problem  they  cannot  solve.     But  let  them 
once  take  a  more  serious  view  of  their  house- 
hold duties,  and  be  better  trained  for  them, 
and  housekeeping  will  cease  to  be  the  trial 
and  bugbear  it  now  is.     They  will  find  an 
interest  and  pleasure  in  their  work  such  as 
they  had  never  known  before. ' ' 

Without  a  fundamental  knowledge  of  the 
working  and  the  needs  of  each  department   To  under- 

stand  the 

of  household  industry,  how  are  women  to  work  at 

first  hand. 

undertake  that  systematic  instruction  of  ser- 

157 


The  Unquiet  Sex 


vants  which  is  a  necessity  nowadays  in  every 
well-ordered  home  ?  and,  more  than  all,  how 
are  they  to  evolve  the  great  general  socio- 
logical principles  that  underlie,  and  are  at 
present  quite  buried  by,  the  mass  of  con- 
fusing details? 

It  seems  strange  enough  that  we  women 
do  not  realize  the  tremendous  gain  there 
would  be  to  ourselves  in  taking  hold  of  this 
problem  with  concerted  determination  to  get 
at  some  solution  of  it.  "Besides  being 
aware,"  as  Miss  Griswold  says,  "of  effi- 
ciently fulfilling  our  destinies  (and  I  believe 
our  moral  satisfaction  in  this  knowledge 
would  do  our  nerves  more  good  than  the 
rest-cure)  we  should  be  free  in  a  well-ordered 
household  from  many  of  the  petty  annoy- 
ances caused  by  the  shortcomings  of  ill- 
trained  servants,  the  countless  worries  and 
complications  that  beset  us  would  be  les- 
sened, and  we  should  have  more  strength 
and  more  time  for  other  occupations." 

And  if  it  should  happen  that  by  a  little 
patient,  humble,  faithful  study  of  this  neg- 
lected subject  we  women  were  to  find  in  its 

158 


The  Case  of  Maria 


development  an  antidote  for  the  ambitious 
superficiality  of  our  intellectual  tastes,  and  a 
conviction  that  it  might  be  as  well,  after  all, 
to  plant  our  first  laurels  by  our  own  fireside — 
why  that,  too,  might  be  something  of  a 
gain. 


159 


i 


University  of  California 

SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 

305  De  Neve  Drive  -  Parking  Lot  17  •  Box  951388 

LOS  ANGELES,  CALIFORNIA  90095-1388 

Return  this  material  to  the  library  from  which  it  was  borrowed. 


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